A mother begs her dead son to hold her hand. A young man, wrapped in bandages, lies crying next to the corpse of another man. A small boy, his face covered in dust and blood, stares from the floor of a hospital as people scream frantically around him.
The scenes at the gates of the last functioning hospital in central Gaza, posted on social media by a Palestinian cameraman after an Israeli strike hit a United Nations school complex, have once again highlighted the dire dilemma. that Palestinian civilians continue to face during eight months of war. : The places where they seek refuge usually end up being attacked.
The videos were posted on Instagram on Thursday after the strike. The New York Times verified that they were shot at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Deir al Balah, in central Gaza.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, Israel launched an attack on a school complex housing thousands of displaced Palestinians who had sought refuge there. Dozens of people died. Israel says its attack targeted and killed Hamas operatives who were using the school building as a base. Palestinian medical workers say it killed civilians.
Of the 40 bodies from the attack recorded by the Gaza Health Ministry, 14 were children and nine were women, the ministry said.
Al-Aqsa hospital had warned for days that it was overwhelmed by an influx of dead and wounded since Israel launched an operation to root out Hamas militants in the area.
On Thursday, crowds gathered at the hospital to mourn and pray for the dead. A local Palestinian cameraman posted a video showing a young woman holding the body of her young son.
“Open your hands,” he pleads with the dead boy as others around him try to wrap his body. “Answer me, you have always answered me, you never liked to bother me.”
The number of people in central Gaza, particularly in Deir al Balah, had increased in recent weeks as Gazans fled an Israeli offensive on the southern city of Rafah. Before Israel launched the operation in Rafah last month, that city had been a major port of refuge for civilians, urged by Israel to head there to avoid fighting elsewhere. At one point, according to UN agencies, Rafah was home to around half of Gaza’s population.
Displaced Gazans often try to set up tents or find apartments near UN facilities or medical units in the hope that their humanitarian purpose, and the fact that aid workers often report their coordinates to Israeli forces , make them a less important target. But Israel has emphasized throughout the war that it will strike wherever it believes Hamas is operating.
Last week, two areas near the fighting in Rafah, where civilians hoped to find safety, came under attack. An Israeli attack near a tent camp in Rafah killed 45 people, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to say the civilian deaths in the episode were a “tragic accident.” A few days later, an attack in the Al-Mawasi area, outside Rafah, killed 21 people; Israel denied responsibility for that attack.
Khalil Farid, 57, a teacher from Nuseirat, said his neighborhood had already been attacked so many times that “there are no windows left in our house to break.” But he and his family have given up trying to flee.
“At home, you know who shares the place with you, who your neighbors are, and that makes you feel safer in some ways,” he said. “But deep down I know that nowhere is safe.”
Nader Ibrahim, Christian Triebert and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reports.