‘The martyrs were cut up and burned’: Survivors of the latest tent massacre in Gaza recount the horror
Palestinians inspect the site of Israeli strike that hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, 4 August 2024.
Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 6 August 2024 for which Mahmoud Abu Humdah conducted the interviews:
On Sunday, August 4, around 2 a.m., the Israeli army bombed a group of tents inside the compound of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. The bombing led to the death of three people and the injury of dozens, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Nahed Saleh, 36, is displaced from Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. She was sleeping when the bombing occurred a few meters away from her tent inside the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. She left the tent to find people running everywhere, screaming and crying. In a terrifying scene, she saw a cluster of tents nearby set ablaze by the bombs.
“At two o’clock, we woke up to a huge explosion. We heard the voices of people screaming, asking, and calling for help to put out the fires. Suddenly, while we were sleeping, the bombing and the raging fire surprised us. People were in the middle of the fire. Saleh told Mondoweiss.
“We didn’t know where to go or how to move. The intensity of the explosion made us leave the tents without putting on our clothes. We were wearing our nightclothes. We thought the bombing was targeting the entire hospital. We went out to find the fire burning the tents next to ours,” she continued.
“It was a nightmare I haven’t woken up from yet. The size of the fire was terrifying, and there was no one to put it out. After a while, the firefighters came, and we saw them taking out the completely burned bodies. The scene was horrific. No one could comprehend it. We saw charred victims with no features,” Saleh said.
“It was a real terror that we lived, and we live it every day in this war.”
The bombing on Sunday was not the first time that the Israeli army has targeted the tents of the displaced people in Gaza. Just last month, an Israeli airstrike targeted tents housing displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area outside of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing 90 people. Two weeks ago, an Israeli strike targeted a tent housing journalists inside the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, killing one person.