On January 5, 2024, at the morgue of Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, in the southern Palestinian Gaza Strip, a male relative covered the bodies of his children, who were killed by Israeli shelling and wrapped in white cloths, crying and mourning.

　　　 A relative weeps and mourns as he covers the bodies of children wrapped in white cloths after they were killed by Israeli artillery fire in front of the morgue at al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah in the southern Palestinian Gaza Strip on January 5, 2024. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it struck more than 100 targets across Gaza overnight over the course of January 5. On Jan. 4, the IDF reported that it had attacked more than 100 targets in southern Gaza,

　At least 12 people, mostly children, were killed overnight in an Israeli airstrike on a house in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on January 4. Despite Israel's call for evacuation from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooded into Rafah. Palestinian humans were pushed to the southern city of Rafah along the Egyptian border. The population of the Rafah area swelled to more than a million in the past few days, from about 280,000 before the war, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. However, Israeli forces continued to attack all parts of the besieged Palestinian territory. Palestinians who took refuge in southern Gaza struggled to find daily food, water, medicine, and toilets. Meanwhile, they were terrorized by Israeli airstrikes and the growing threat of disease.

　According to the Israeli Defense Minister, thousands of Hamas fighters remained in northern Gaza and the entire neighborhood was reduced to rubble. Heavy fighting continued in central Gaza and Khan Younis in the south, but Hamas military units remained largely intact. The UN humanitarian chief said the Gaza Strip had become uninhabitable and a public health disaster had occurred, with more than 400,000 infections reported since October 7, including 180,000 upper respiratory infections and more than 136,000 cases of diarrhea, half of them in children under five years old.

　About 1,200 Israelis were killed and about 250 taken hostage in an October 7 attack by Hamas from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. More than 22,400 Palestinians, both civilians and fighters, were killed, two-thirds of them women and children, in nearly three months of Israeli airstrikes, ground and sea attacks, according to the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the Hamas militant group.