EARLY MONDAY MORNING Israel bombed a refugee camp on the grounds of a Gaza hospital, setting off a fire that ripped through the surrounding tents leaving four people dead and at least 40 wounded.
Videos posted online showed people attempting to battle the fire while those trapped in the blaze were being burned alive.
Here is what we know about the attack:
Just after midnight on Monday, a large explosion lit up the tented encampment in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital grounds while most people were asleep.
The hospital, which is one of three that are still partly operational in the besieged Palestinian territory, is located in the central Gazan city of Dar Al-Balah.
The Gaza health ministry said it was the seventh time this year that Israel has attacked the hospital.
Before the nighttime attack, the hospital was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter that killed at least 20 people.
Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 injured. Twenty-five people were transferred to Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Doctor Fahad Al Haddad, the director of the emergency department at Al Aqsa Hospital, said the majority of the casualties were children and women. There were also a number of elderly people among the wounded.
Most of them had to lie on the floor of the emergency department, he said.
“Most of the injuries were massive burns,” he said, including third and second degree burns which would require treatment in a burn unit, which the hospital currently does not have.
Around five of those injured had third degree burns covering at least 40% of their bodies, meaning they are at risk of sepsis or organ failure, he said.
Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler in his arms with a bandaged head. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported that the bodies which were later taken into the hospital were “fully incinerated” and “burned beyond recognition”. He said they were only able to be identified by their families based on which tents they were removed from.
The images of people being burned alive in the camp are shocking.
In one video posted online, a man who appears to be bed bound and connected to an IV drip reaches out from the flames as people around him scream and try in vain to extinguish the fire.
The man who died in the flames has since been identified as 19-year-old software engineering student Shaban al-Dalou.
Another video shows children emerging from the tents on fire as they are immediately draped in blankets by rescuers.
Other videos show the explosion caused by the initial airstrike, which was followed by a number of other explosions.
Following the fire, pro-Israeli figures and social media accounts have accused Palestinians of staging the scene, despite the fact that Israel acknowledged it had struck the camp.
It is a common tactic among anti-Palestinian activists to describe videos and photos of Israeli atrocities as examples of “Pallywood” (Palestinian Hollywood).
The Israeli military said the strike on the tents targeted militants hiding among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks.
“Gaza is a never ending hell,” the head of the UNRWA, the UN aid agency in Palestine, Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X.
“Meanwhile, in the same area, an UNRWA school was hit with 20 people reported killed,” he wrote.
#Gaza : another night of horror in the middle areas.
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) October 14, 2024
Tents up in flames due to an airstrike on the courtyard of Al Aqsa hospital where people sought shelter.
Meanwhile, in the same area, an @UNRWA school was hit with 20 people reported killed. The school was planned to be… pic.twitter.com/lgDmLNWmov
Barry Malone, the Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the Thomson Reuters Foundation also responded to the attack on X, saying:
“After years in this business, I’m pretty hardened. I’ve seen many horrors. But watching people being burned alive last night, stretching out their hands for help. A man in a hospital bed with an IV attached going up in flames. It felt like a new horror, akin to a vision of hell.”
The Biden administration called the strike on Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital “deeply disturbing” and said it has expressed concerns about it to the Israeli government.
“Israel has a responsibility to do more to avoid civilian casualties — and what happened here is horrifying, even if Hamas was operating near the hospital in an attempt to use civilians as human shields,” the White House National Security Council said in a statement.
Despite continually raising “concerns” throughout Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, which was sparked by the Hamas-led attacks on Israel a year ago, the White House has also repeatedly voiced “ironclad” support for Israel.
UK Labour MP and member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee Emily Thornberry was asked if there should be any red lines in terms of British political support for Israel after being shown footage of the fire.
She said the footage was “very difficult to process”, before saying:
“Our principle is that Israel has a right to defend itself but we’ve always said it has to do that within the confines of international law and it has to be proportionate. All civilian life is equal and to see the suffering that is happening at the moment, there is universal condemnation of it.”
The health ministry in Gaza said today that at least 42,409 people have been killed and 99,153 people have been wounded since October last year, including 65 deaths in the previous 24 hours.
With reporting from AFP and Press Association
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