Health officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip have resorted to storing the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli air strikes in ice cream freezer trucks because moving them to hospitals is too risky and cemeteries are short of space.

Israel has unleashed the fiercest bombardment on the Gaza Strip to hit back at the Palestinian militant group Hamas after it carried out the deadliest attack on Israel for decades.

“The hospital morgue can only take 10 bodies, so we have brought in ice cream freezers from the ice cream factories in order to store the huge numbers of martyrs,” said Dr Yasser Ali of the Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah.

The freezer trucks, whose sides still show advertising images of smiling children enjoying ice cream cones, are normally used to make deliveries to supermarkets. Now they are makeshift morgues for victims of the devastating war.

Authorities in Gaza said Israeli air strikes had killed more than 2,300 people, a quarter of them children, with nearly 10,000 wounded so far. Hospitals are running short of supplies and struggling to cope with growing numbers of wounded.

Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas after its fighters rampaged through Israeli towns on October 7 shooting men, women and children and seizing hostages. That means the Gaza death toll will rise sharply.

“Even with these freezers, the number (of the dead) exceeds the capacity of this main morgue of the hospital, and alternative ones, and between 20 and 30 bodies are being kept in tents too,” said Ali, as he opened the doors of the freezers to show the white-shrouded bodies inside.