As dawn broke Thursday, Haitham Abu Ammar combed through the remains of the school that had become a refuge for him and thousands of other Gaza refugees. For hours, he helped people gather the limbs of their loved ones.
“The most painful thing I’ve ever experienced was picking up a piece of flesh with my hands,” said Abu Amar, 27, a construction worker. “I never thought I would have to do something like that.”
Early Thursday morning, an Israeli airstrike hit a school complex, killing dozens of people, including at least nine militants, the Israeli military said.
Throughout the day, bodies and mangled limbs recovered from the wreckage, wrapped in blankets and piled into truck beds, were taken to Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, the last major medical facility still operating in central Gaza.
The Israeli military explained that this airstrike was carefully planned. Maj. Gen. Daniel Hagari told reporters that Israeli forces opened fire after tracking the militants for three days in their converted school shelter.
“The Israeli military and the Shin Bet have found a solution to separate terrorists from those seeking refuge,” he said.
But through testimony from domestic and international medical staff and a visit to the hospital by The New York Times on Thursday afternoon, it became clear that civilians had also died.
Many people gathered outside the hospital morgue to cry and pray for the dead. The hospital hallways were crowded with people seeking help or at least some comfort.
A little girl with a bleeding leg said, “Mommy!” “Her mommy!” her sobbing mother followed her down the hallways of her hospital.
Although the exact death toll cannot be confirmed, the Gaza Health Ministry said that among the approximately 40 people killed in the attack, 14 were children and 9 were women. On this day, the Associated Press reported other figures, citing a hospital morgue, saying at least 33 people had died, including three women and nine children.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital has become a symbol not only of the enormous loss of life in central Gaza, but also of the growing despair among Gazans who are still trying to find safety there.
In the past few weeks, the area has been flooded with people fleeing another Israeli attack in the southern city of Rafah. Before the offensive began, Rafah was a major refuge for civilians and was once home to more than half of Gaza’s population.
Then on Wednesday, Israel announced it had launched a new operation against Hamas militants in central Gaza. Central Gaza is where many Gazans who fled Rafah eventually settled.
The strike at the school complex took place around 2am the next day. They attacked a building in a complex run by UNRWA, the main UN relief agency for Palestine in the Gaza Strip.
Since Israel began its offensive on Gaza in October in retaliation for Hamas-led attacks on Israel, these schools have been used to shelter people in Gaza who have been driven from their homes by fighting. Israel says Hamas is hiding its troops in civilian places such as schools and hospitals, a claim Israel denies.
A new military operation in the past two days has left 140 people dead and hundreds wounded in Al Aqsa, health officials said.
Karin Huster, a nurse with the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders and a medical coordinator at the hospital, said, “There are a series of large-scale casualties, but there is a growing shortage of medical supplies to treat them, which is completely confusing.” said. .
During The Times’ visit to Al Aqsa, medical staff could be seen making their way through panicked crowds to reach the operating theater, delayed by the sheer number of people. Amid the chaos, medical staff sometimes rushed people with fatal injuries to operating rooms, wasting vital time on those who still had a chance of survival, he said.
Ms Huster said most of the people she had seen over the past few days were women and children.
Mr Abu Ammar was back in hospital after rescuing his friend from the rubble of the school complex in the early afternoon on Thursday.
This time, my friend’s brother and I tried to push it into the hallway near the entrance. The brother’s face was cut by shrapnel, and his right leg had a deep wound.
But he wasn’t the only one who desperately needed help.
There were many injured people around them, some lying on the floor bleeding, others in beds crying for help. One man, whose face was blackened by burns and dust from the blast that morning, begged two of his relatives who were with him to fan his face with a piece of cardboard that had been shaken at him.
The scene among the dead in the morgue was as chaotic as the scene among the living. Bodies were strewn everywhere, and relatives were crowding around, crying and screaming. The stench of blood was overwhelming.
The crowd outside the morgue ebbed and flowed as bodies wrapped in blankets, with veterinary supplies in short supply, were wheeled into pickup trucks for burial. Relatives and friends lined up to pray before the dead man was driven away. Passersby on the street also stopped and joined in.
“When is it too much?” Mr. Huster said. “I no longer know how to express this in a way that shocks people. Where did humanity go wrong?”
June 7, 2024
:
An earlier version of this article inaccurately stated Karin Huster’s role. She is a nurse at Doctors Without Borders, but she has not worked as a nurse in a hospital. She said that over the past few days, most of the people she has seen have been women and children, but the majority of the people she has treated.
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