Gaza Anarchy: Militants, Clans, and Gangs Vie for Power Amid Israeli Offensive

For the beleaguered staff of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, one new casualty brought into the emergency department last week posed a particular challenge. He had been wounded moments earlier in the southern Gaza city while fighting in a battle between rival armed gangs over hundreds of valuable sacks of flour stripped from aid convoys and, within an hour of his arrival, men with assault rifles had invaded the hospital.

- Jason Burke

They roughed up medical staff, smashed equipment and set fire to vehicles. Other armed men arrived and automatic gunfire reverberated around the compound, already battered by Israeli strikes. There was worse to come. Another force joined the shooting, dispatched by the interior ministry in Gaza, long a bastion of Hamas, to restore order. The new battle ended only when gunmen from the duelling gangs fled. Throughout the fighting, Israeli drones flew overhead.

The incident, described to the Guardian by medical staff and local residents, was a microcosm of the new violence and anarchy in Gaza after almost 21 months of war.

"You have [these] gangs fighting and the Israeli airstrikes or troops shooting people, and Hamas still there, while there are miles and miles of ruins where desperate people are cooking on fires and living in tents and very hungry," one humanitarian official said. "It's like some kind of post-apocalyptic sci-fi film."