VIDEO: Gazans use hand gestures to convey messages amid communications blackout

With the Gaza Strip cut off from the outside world, Palestinians have resorted to using hand gestures and facial expressions to convey messages to family members.

In a video being circulated on social media, a Palestinian man can be seen standing behind the spokesperson for the health ministry — during the first press conference in Gaza following the cell tower bombing — and using hand gestures to communicate with his loved ones.

Gaza's electricity, telephone, and internet services have all been cut off leaving the besieged territory isolated from the outside world.

Israel's army pounded Gaza mercilessly on Saturday following a night of intense shelling that, according to rescuers, damaged hundreds of buildings, three weeks into a war sparked by the worst attack in the nation's history.

Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Israel to "immediately stop" the attacks, while the families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas demanded a government explanation about their fate amid the army's intensified air and artillery strikes.

The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Saturday that at least 7,703 people have been killed in the war with Israel that erupted on October 7.

More than 3,500 children are among the dead. The overall figure is the highest number of war fatalities in Gaza since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the territory in 2005.

Hamas said all internet connections and communications across Gaza had been cut, accusing Israel of taking the measure "to perpetrate massacres with bloody retaliatory strikes from the air, land and sea".

Human Rights Watch also warned the near-total telecommunications blackout in Gaza risked providing cover for "mass atrocities".

The Palestinian Red Crescent said the communications outage had disrupted ambulance services.

Lynne Hastings, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, also stressed on X that "hospitals & humanitarian operations can't continue without communications".