Charred bodies and screams: Witnesses describe scenes of horror at a camp.

 

Charred bodies and screams: Witnesses describe scenes of horror at a camp.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/27/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah

 

Witnesses and survivors described a terrifying scene of tents in flames and burn victims after what the Gaza Health Ministry said was an Israeli strike on a tent camp housing displaced Palestinians in Rafah, Gaza.

 

The health ministry said at least 45 people in the camp had been killed and 240 others wounded.

 

The Israeli military said that it had aimed a strike at a Hamas compound and killed two Hamas leaders. A legal official with the military said Monday that the strike was under review.

 

Bilal al-Sapti, 30, a construction worker in Rafah, said he saw charred bodies in the wreckage of the camp in the Tal as Sultan area of Rafah, and people screaming as firefighters tried to put out the flames.

 

“The fire was very strong and was all over the camp,” he said. “There was darkness and no electricity.”

 

Mr. al-Sapti said that shrapnel from the strike tore up the tent where he was staying with his wife and two children, but that his family was uninjured.

 

“What kind of a tent will protect us from missiles and shrapnel?” he said.

 

UNRWA, the main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, described on the social media platform X what it called a “horrifying” attack and said the images emerging from the site were “yet another testament” that Gaza is “hell on earth.”

 

Adli Abu Taha, 33, a freelance journalist who was at a nearby field hospital run by the United Arab Emirates Red Crescent, said the dead and wounded began arriving there shortly after he heard two loud explosions.

 

“Several injured arrived without one or more limbs and were severely burned,” Mr. Abu Taha said. “The hospital soon became overwhelmed,” he added.

 

When Mr. Abu Taha went to the tent camp on Monday morning, all he could see was “destruction” coupled with “the smell of smoke and burned flesh,” he said. He said that some families were dismantling their tents and preparing to find another place to seek shelter.

 

Dr. Marwan al-Hams, who was at the Tal Al Sultan Health Center in Rafah where many of the casualties first arrived before being transferred to nearby field hospitals, said that of the killed and wounded he saw, a majority were women and children.

 

“Many of the dead bodies were severely burned, had amputated limbs and were torn to pieces,” he said.

 

Mohammed Abu Ghanem, 26, said that he and the 13 other people who had been sheltering in a tent with him in the camp were wondering where to go. “I hear that everywhere is being bombed and I have no cash to pay for the trucks that evacuate people,” he said, adding: “We have no other option but to remain here and wait for death.”

 

Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Istanbul.

 

— Hiba Yazbek and Abu Bakr Bashir reporting from Nazareth, Israel, and London