“People were neither injured nor killed: they were burned,” laments Mohammad Hamad, the day after the deadly Israeli strike on a displaced persons camp in the Palestinian town of Rafah.
Amid the rubble, children pick up packets of chips saved from the flames while men clear out what remains of charred tents or makeshift shelters.
The Israeli operation, which lasted several hours overnight from Sunday to Monday, resulted in the death of at least 45 people according to local authorities in the Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian movement Hamas is in power.
“My cousin’s daughter, a child of no more than 13 years old, was one of the “martyrs”. His features were unrecognizable because the shrapnel tore his face off,” testifies Mohammad Hamad, 24 years old.
The Israeli army said one of its military planes “struck a Hamas compound in Rafah” on Sunday evening, killing two leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement.
The strike caused a fire that ravaged the camp in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah governorate, reducing to ashes the tents and shelters of residents of the Gaza Strip displaced by more than seven months of fighting between the Israeli army and the armed movements of this Palestinian territory.
In the morning, all that remained were pieces of blackened sheet metal and charred planks from the improvised camp.
” Earthquake “
“When we heard the noise [de l’explosion]the sky suddenly lit up,” Mouhannad, a displaced Palestinian who witnessed the scene, told AFP.
“We saw charred and dismembered bodies following the use of […] missiles which caused a massive fire,” Mohammad al-Mughayyir, director of Gaza Civil Defense, told AFP on Monday.
Mr. Mughayyir, who oversaw rescue efforts after the fire broke out, said fuel shortages and lack of water made fighting the blaze particularly difficult.
“There were dismembered people, children, women and elderly people among the dead,” he said.
Shocked Palestinians who had sought refuge in this part of the city after receiving orders from the Israeli army to evacuate other areas, told AFP of their incomprehension.
“They dropped leaflets asking us to go to the humanitarian zone of Tal al-Sultan, so we complied and came here,” Abou Mohammad, a man who left his home in the northern Gaza Strip, a few weeks after the start of the war triggered on October 7 by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli territory.
“And despite this, yesterday, as I was having dinner, at sunset, I suddenly felt like an earthquake.”
“Safe zone”
Mohammad Abou Qamar, 27, was also surprised by the strikes, having also left the north to settle in the camp described as a “safe zone” by the Israeli authorities.
“Last night, to our great surprise, the camp was bombed,” even though this place was considered “so-called safe,” he told AFP. “A fire broke out and children, women and elderly people were burned.”
At the Tal al-Sultan clinic, the floor of one room is covered with shrouds made from pieces of white sheets. The remains were then taken in vans for burial.
In the middle of the macabre procession, a man mourns his sister, Yasmine Miqdad, killed in the strike.
“She was seven months pregnant, her room was bombed,” Ahmed Miqdad told AFP. “She was getting ready to welcome her baby.”
“What did this innocent child do to deserve this?” », he says.
On Monday, the Israeli army and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strike on the camp was under investigation. Mr. Netanyahu called it “a tragic accident.”
The war was sparked by the Hamas attack on October 7 which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and launched a devastating offensive in the Gaza Strip in retaliation, resulting in the deaths of more than 36,000 people, most of them civilians, according to data from Hamas’s health ministry in Gaza.