The Israeli army attacked tents housing displaced people at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, causing a fire that killed four people and injured many more.
The images are shocking and spread around the world, generating outrage. Live bodies of Palestinians were consumed by fire after the attacks.
Medical sources cited by the Wafa news agency said the fire, which broke out after an Israeli bombardment early on Monday morning, also injured another 70 people in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
Videos of burning tents and people desperately trying to put out the fires and rescue people trapped in them could be seen on social media.
“I was sleeping in a nearby building, about 300 meters away, and I woke up to the sound of the shelling,” Bilal Ezzat Khudari, originally from Gaza City but now living in Deir al-Balah, told Middle East Eye. “I ran to the hospital to see what had happened and saw that the bombing had started a fire, which then activated the gas cylinders used by people and caused an even bigger inferno.”
“The fire was between 10 and 15 meters high. It was so big that people couldn’t help. It kept spreading and from time to time something exploded inside and pushed the rescuers back,” he continued.
Khudari said he saw people inside the fire being burned alive.
“I saw at least three charred bodies. There was a falafel seller who worked and slept here. His wife and son died in the fire. His son was a good guy, an engineer.”
It was the seventh such attack on the Al-Aqsa Hospital complex, according to the Palestinian government’s media office in Gaza.
Avichay Adraee, spokesman for the Israeli army, confirmed that the Israeli air force had carried out the attack and, as on previous occasions, justified the criminal action under the excuse that the hospital was a “command and control center” used by Hamas, although of course he provided no evidence for that claim.
With this excuse, Israel attacked dozens of hospitals, schools, family homes and civil infrastructure over the last year. In no case did he present evidence of its alleged use by Hamas.
Maha al-Sarsak, a displaced Palestinian from Gaza City taking refuge in Al-Aqsa Hospital, said her mother had heard a drone in the sky at 1 a.m.
Sarsak and his mother fled in a hurry, but two members of the Al-Dalou family, he said, did not make it out in time.
“They came out like charred skeletons,” she said through tears. “I saw death with my own eyes. It was terrifying.”
“I saw something burning inside the fire and thought it was a mattress, but then I realized it was a woman.”
“May God burn you in hell, Netanyahu,” Sarsak added, referring to the Israeli prime minister.
Also a school
Separately, on Sunday night Israeli artillery hit a school used as a shelter for Palestinian civilians in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 22 people, including children.
“One attack hit the courtyard of a hospital, burning the tents where people were sleeping,” the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, said on Friday.
“Shortly before this, a UNRWA school housing families was attacked in Nuseirat. That same school was to be used today as a polio vaccination center.”
In the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, Israeli shelling of a food distribution center killed 10 Palestinian aid seekers on Monday.
Ibrahim Rabea, a resident of Jabalia, told Middle East Eye that the attack targeted a group of people who came to the center to collect aid left there, after running out of food in their homes.
At least 10 people were killed and another 40 injured in the bombing, according to initial estimates.
The dead and wounded were left lying in the streets “without ambulances, without civil protection and without anyone capable of rescuing them,” Rabea said.
Jabalia has been under an Israeli siege that has been blocking the entry of food and water for nine days.
Fuente: Middle East Eye
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
