Israel's surprise bombardment plunged Palestinians back into 'hell'

DEIR EL BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Israeli bombs began falling before dawn, lighting the sky with orange flares and shattering the stillness.

The surprise wave of airstrikes plunged Palestinians back into a nightmare they had hoped might be behind them.

The bombs crashed across Gaza early Tuesday, setting fire to a sprawling tent camp in the southern city of Khan Younis and flattening a Hamas-run prison. They hit the Al-Tabaeen shelter in Gaza City, where Majid Nasser was sleeping with his family.

“I went out to see where the bombing was. Suddenly the second strike happened in the room next to us,” he said. “I heard screaming, my mother and sister screaming, calling for help. I came and entered the room and found the children under the rubble.” Everyone was injured, but alive.

Palestinians tried to claw bodies from the wreckage with their bare hands. Parents arrived at hospitals, barefoot, carrying children who were limp and covered in ash. Streets and hospitals filled with bodies.

By midday, over 400 people had been killed. It was one of the deadliest days of the 17-month war, following two months of ceasefire.

During the truce that began on Jan. 19, hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza had returned to their homes, many of them destroyed. A surge of aid brought food and medicines — until Israel cut off aid two weeks ago to pressure the Hamas militant group into accepting a new proposal instead of continuing with the truce.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan had even provided moments of joy as families held communal sunset meals ending each day’s fast without the fear of bombardment.

Instead, the war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and caused widespread destruction was back with full force.

“What is happening to us is hell. Hell in every sense of the word," said Zeyad Abed, as he stood among the blackened remains of tents in Khan Younis.

Fedaa Heriz, a displaced woman in Gaza City, said victims were killed in their sleep just before the predawn meal ahead of the daily Ramadan fast.

“They set the alarm to wake up for suhoor, and they wake up to death? They don’t wake up?” she screamed.

Fedaa Hamdan lost her husband and their two children in the strikes in Khan Younis.

“My children died while they were hungry,” she said, as funeral prayers were held over their bodies.

Scenes at hospitals recalled the early days of the war, when Israel launched a massive bombardment of Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

Survivors on Tuesday held rushed funeral rites over dozens of body bags lining the yard of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Mothers sobbed over the bloodied bodies of children, as warplanes hummed overhead. Doctors struggled to treat the flow of wounded.

“A level of horror and evil that is really hard to articulate. It felt like Armageddon," said Dr. Tanya-Haj Hassan, a volunteer with the Medical Aid for Palestinians aid group.

She described the Nasser Hospital emergency room in Khan Younis as chaos, with patients, including children, spread across the floor. Some were still wrapped in the blankets they had slept in.

Dr. Ismail Awad with the Doctors Without Borders aid group said the clinic received about 26 wounded people, including a woman seven months pregnant with shrapnel in her neck. She later died.

“It was overwhelming, the number of patients," Awad said.

At the Al-Attar clinic in Muwasi in southern Gaza, medical staff said they were forced to operate without light bulbs and emergency ventilation devices.

Israel not only blocked all supplies from entering Gaza two weeks ago but also cut off electricity to the territory's main desalination plant last week. That has again created scarcities in medicine, food, fuel and fresh water for Gaza's over 2 million people.

New Israeli evacuation orders covering Gaza’s eastern flank next to Israel and stretching into a key corridor dividing Gaza's north and south sent Palestinians fleeing again.

Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, published a map on X telling Palestinians in those areas, including highly populated neighborhoods, to leave immediately and head for shelters.

“Continuing to remain in the designated areas puts your life and the lives of your family members at risk," he said.

The evacuation zone appeared to include parts of Gaza's main north-south road, raising questions about how people might travel. Palestinians nevertheless gathered their belongings and set out, hardly knowing where to go.

UNICEF spokesperson Rosalia Bollen recalled that the days before the bombardment felt uneasy. She could sense fear. Children would ask if she believed the war would start again.

“This nightmare scenario has been on everyone’s mind,” she said. “It’s just heartbreaking that it is materializing right now and that it is shattering the last piece of hope that people had.”

Frankel reported from Jerusalem and Magdy from Cairo. and Associated Press writer Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

A woman reacts as she identifies a person killed in overnight Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

A woman mourns as she identifies a body in the Al-Ahli hospital following overnight Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, in Gaza City, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

A boy reacts as he looks at the body of a person killed during overnight Israeli army airstrikes across the Gaza Strip in the yard of the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

A woman reacts over the body of a person killed during overnight Israeli army airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, at the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

An injured man is take to the Al-Ahli hospital following Israeli army overnight airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, in Gaza City, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi).

A Palestinian man holds the body of his 11 month-old nephew Mohammad Shaban, killed in an Israeli army airstrikes at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Palestinians inspect the damage at Al-Tabi'in School in central Gaza Strip following an Israeli airstrike, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

The bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli army airstrikes are brought to Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

An injured man waits for treatment on the floor of a hospital following Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Mohammad Jahjouh)

Injured Palestinians wait for treatment at the hospital following Israeli army airstrikes in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Mohammad Jahjouh)

A body of a Palestinian killed in an Israeli army airstrikes is brought to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

A woman carries the body of a child to Al-Ahli hospital following overnight Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, in Gaza City, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

A man mourns as he places the body of a child in the hospital morgue following Israeli army airstrikes in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Mohammad Jahjouh)

A dead person killed during an Israeli army strike is taken into the hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday March 18, 2025.(AP Photo/ Mohammad Jahjouh)

BERLIN (AP) — Questions are mounting in Canada and in Europe over whether big-ticket purchases of high-end U.S. weaponry, such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, are still a wise strategic choice for Western countries worried about their investment in U.S. defense technology.

In less than two months, U.S. President Donald Trump has upended decades of U.S. foreign policy. He has left NATO members questioning whether the U.S. will honor the alliance's commitment to defend each other if other European countries are attacked by Russia. He's also made repeat overtures to Russia and suspended most U.S. foreign aid.

And Pete Hegseth, Trump's defense secretary, last month told a gathering of European defense ministers “that stark strategic realities” prevent the U.S. from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.

That could impact foreign sales of the Lockheed Martin-produced F-35 and other advanced U.S. jets like the F-16. As the war in Ukraine continues into its fourth year, it's become clear that Eastern European NATO members still have vast stores of Soviet-era weapons in their stockpiles that were not interoperable with Western weaponry. A long-term plan to get all of NATO on similar platforms — by replacing old Soviet-era jets with Western ones, particularly the F-16 and in some cases, the F-35 — has gained momentum.

Some of the NATO countries are now re-thinking tying their defense to U.S.-made systems and potentially considering European jets like the Saab Gripen, Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale instead.

In Canada, where Trump has launched a trade war and has threatened economic coercion to make it the 51st American state, new Prime Minister Mark Carney has asked Defense Minister Bill Blair to review its purchase of F-35s. Canada has been a partner with the U.S. in developing the F-35.

Blair will see if there are other options “given the changing environment,” a defense spokesman said.

And in Portugal, the outgoing defense minister said in an interview with a Portuguese newspaper published last week that “recent positions” taken by the U.S. compelled a rethink about the purchase of F-35s because the U.S. has become unpredictable. Portugal is considering various options to replace its F-16s.

“You’re not just buying an airplane, you’re buying a relationship with the United States,” said Winslow T. Wheeler, a longtime government watchdog who spent 30 years in the U.S. Congress working for Democrats and Republicans on national security and defense issues. “People in the past have not just welcomed but craved that kind of relationship.”

The Netherlands and Norway have voiced recent support for the F-35 program in comments to the media.

“The F-35 is a vital component of our national defense capability, and the cooperation and dialogue with the United States continues to support the development and use of this high-end platform," Norwegian State Secretary Andreas Flåm said in a statement. ”We expect this constructive cooperation to continue into the future."

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was designed to combine stealth, maneuverability and attack capabilities in a single aircraft. Each jet costs about $85 million (78 million euros), and the price jumps to $100 million (91 million euros) to $150 million (137 million euros) when supporting infrastructure and spare parts are included. About 1,100 have been produced to date for 16 military services across the globe.

The F-35B, a variant that can take off from ship decks vertically, is the latest model. It's the most expensive weapons system the U.S. has ever produced, with estimated lifetime costs now expected to top $1.7 trillion. One of the ways the program was counting on reducing those costs was by selling more aircraft to international customers.

But the Trump administration's recent pause on providing intelligence to Ukraine to force the country to negotiate with Russia has fueled fears that the U.S. may have similar ways to coerce them in a future fight — such as by embedding a hypothetical “kill switch” in the F-35's millions of lines of programming.

In a statement, the Pentagon's F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office on Tuesday vehemently rejected any notion that jets sold to allies could be remotely disabled.

“There is no kill switch. The F-35 was conceived, developed, and continues to be operated and sustained as a joint/coalition platform, built on strong partnerships with U.S. allies and partner nations across the globe,” the office said in a statement. “The strength of the F-35 program lies in its global partnership, and we remain committed to providing all users with the full functionality and support they require.”

But that's not the only way to impact an ally's program, Wheeler said. The F-35 requires constant U.S.-controlled tech upgrades to operate in combat. If a relationship with the U.S. soured and updates were delayed, it could make a jet, or even a fleet, inoperable, he said.

Lockheed Martin, in a statement Tuesday, said the company is committed to helping its customers “strengthen their airpower and security with the F-35.”

“As part of our government contracts, we deliver all system infrastructure and data required for all F-35 customers to sustain the aircraft,” the defense contractor said. “We remain committed to providing affordable and reliable sustainment services to our customers that enable them to complete their missions and come home safely.”

The Saab Gripen, Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale could see an increase in sales if other countries decide to forgo their F-35 purchases. But none of them have the stealth capabilities of the F-35.

The Swedish-made Saab Gripen is used by the militaries of Sweden, the Czech Republic, Hungary, South Africa,Brazil and Thailand. Conventional defense industry wisdom says it's significantly cheaper than the F-35, Wheeler said.

The Eurofighter Typhoon, a swing-role combat aircraft, is part of the British, German, Spanish and Italian forces. It's manufactured by a consortium of defense companies: Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo.

The French-built Dassault Rafale twin-jet fighter is used by the French Navy and the French Air and Space Force. The governments of Egypt, India, Qatar, Greece, Croatia, the United Arab Emirates, Serbia and Indonesia have all signed contracts for Rafales.

David Jordan, a senior lecturer in defense studies at King’s College London and co-director of the Freeman Air and Space Institute, said that previously, European leaders felt it was easier and more cost-effective to lean on the U.S. defense industry — and American taxpayers — to get access to advanced weaponry. But the Trump administration's move away from Europe could be the turning point, Jordan said.

It would require the continent to pool its money and resources — often a sticking point among the countries — into research and development, manufacturing and logistics, but Jordan said it's possible within five to 10 years.

“The European defense industry is more than capable of building what it needs,” Jordan said.

French President Emmanuel Macron is already ramping up his efforts to persuade France’s allies to switch to European defense contractors and weapons systems, including French-built Rafale fighters.

“Those who buy the F-35 should be offered the Rafale. That’s how we’ll increase the pace,” La Dépêche du Midi quoted Macron as saying during a press briefing Friday to journalists from regional French newspapers.

If the Europeans increase their production, it would greatly affect the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin and other U.S. defense companies. Jordan said U.S. defense contractors are likely concerned about Trump’s next move.

“At what point will they say ‘we don’t like this, we’re talking about risking billions of dollars here,’” Jordan said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Copp reported from Washington.

FILE - A U.S. Air Force officer, left, briefs an Indian naval officer about the F-35 fighter aircraft at the static display area on the last day of the Aero India 2025, a biennial event, at Yelahanka air base in Bengaluru, India, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi, File)

FILE - U.S. Air Force fighter aircraft F-35 performs aerobatic maneuvers on the third day of the Aero India 2025, a biennial event, at Yelahanka air base in Bengaluru, India, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi, File)