Gaza City, Palestinian Territories:
Gazans sifted through the rubble of the destroyed hospital and collected the bodies of those killed in the battered enclave on Wednesday, hours after an attack killed hundreds of people sheltering in the hospital.
Next to rows of charred vehicles, volunteers recovered corpses and human limbs placed in body bags, while the remains of others were covered in white shrouds and blankets.
“This is a massacre,” Ahmed Tafesh, who helped with the recovery efforts, told AFP, saying he had collected the eyes, arms, legs and heads of the dead. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
Health authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza said the explosion killed between 200 and 300 people at Ahli Arab Hospital and was caused by an Israeli airstrike in retaliation for the Islamist group’s Oct. 7 attack on communities near the enclave.
At nearby Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, residents gathered to identify the dead in the hospital’s morgue and take other bodies for burial.
Yahya Karim, 70, was among those searching for clues about the fate of their relatives.
“I don’t know how many of them have died and how many are still alive,” said Karim, who admitted he planned to take shelter in hospital before the strike.
Outside Ahli Hospital, others who survived the attack and who spoke to AFP recounted the terrifying moment the attack took place.
“We felt there was a fire and things were falling on us. We started looking for each other. The electricity suddenly went out and we couldn’t see anything,” Fatima Saed said through tears.
“I don’t know how we got out.”
Gaza resident Adnan al-Naqa told AFP that about 2,000 people took refuge in the hospital at the time of the strike on Tuesday evening.
“When I entered the hospital, I heard the explosion and saw a huge fire,” Naqa said.
“The entire square was on fire, there were bodies everywhere, children, women and the elderly.”
War of words
With water and food supplies scarce, the United Nations estimates that about a million of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents are currently displaced, while thousands are sheltering in hospitals across the densely populated enclave.
As residents surveyed the damage, Israeli and Palestinian militants traded blame for the attack.
On Wednesday morning, the Israeli army provided “evidence” that Islamist militants were responsible for the blast. A review of the attack found that others were to blame.
“The evidence – which we share with all of you – confirms that the Gaza hospital explosion was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired,” military spokesman Daniel Hagari told a news conference in Tel Aviv.
“There was no IDF (Israeli army) fire by land, sea or air that hit the hospital,” Hagari said.
US President Joe Biden backed Israel’s account of the strike, telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “it looks like it was done by the other team” after he landed in Israel for a high-stakes solidarity visit.
Hamas fired back at the Israeli military’s comments, saying “the outrageous lies do not mislead anyone.”
Israel’s Arab allies blamed Israel for the hospital deaths, despite the military’s denials.
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, both of which established ties with Israel in the 2020 Abraham Accords, condemned the “Israeli” attack.
Morocco, another country that recognized Israel in 2020, also blamed it for the strike, as did Egypt, which became the first Arab country to normalize relations in 1979.
As the two sides blamed each other, Israeli airstrikes continued to ravage the war-torn enclave, forcing residents to take cover early on Wednesday.
For 12 days, Israel has carried out a devastating bombardment of Gaza in retaliation for the killing of 1,400 people who were shot, maimed or burned in shocking cross-border attacks launched by Hamas on October 7.
About 3,000 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli airstrikes, according to health officials.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)