‘We collected body parts of women and children’
More than 150 displaced civilians were sheltering in a family home in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah area. As night fell, they were hit by a massive Israeli air strike. “You can see for yourself the bodies. All the dead were women and children. There is no peaceful place for us to go. We were all displaced, we’ve all lost our homes. Where do you want us to go? The whole world is watching us. Have mercy on us,” one woman told Al Jazeera.
In dark and dangerous conditions, rescuers tried to save those they could. “We rushed downstairs when we heard the bombing. We saw the whole building coming down,” another man said. “We collected body parts of women and children. I swear to God they were all women and children between seven, eight and 12 years old. What have they done to deserve to die like this? What did this young girl do to Israel to be dismembered like this?”
‘For 8 years, we tried to have him’: Family of baby killed in Israeli strike
warning, picture of dead baby
Palestinian woman Noor al-Dalou carries the body of her son Yasser, who was killed in an Israeli strike at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.
Yasser al-Dalu’s parents had waited eight years to have their child. Now, the four-months-old is dead. “I struggled so much to be able to have him,” Noor al-Dalu, Yasser’s grieving mother, told the Reuters news agency. Yasser was born not long after Israel attacked Gaza last year. He was killed along with 21 others when the house they were in was struck by Israeli missiles on Friday. His small body is wrapped in a shroud inside a morgue.
Fourteen children, including Yasser, four women, and four men were killed in the attack on a house owned by the family of Mahmoud Abu Zaeiter, a comedian with 1.2 million online followers. Their house in Deir el-Balah was where Yasser and his parents were sheltering in after they fled Gaza City at the start of the war.
“We were sitting, and suddenly the rubble fell on our heads, I don’t know how the missiles fell, I was holding the child, in my embrace. I was telling, Noor, ‘Look at your son,’ I started nudging the baby, and moving him, slapping him so he could cry, but he didn’t, he was still,” said Rasha Abu Zaeiter, Yasser’s grandmother.
Dozens were rushed to the nearby Al-Aqsa Hospital, a barely functioning facility struggling to cope with the number of victims.
A woman mourns next to the bodies of Palestinians killed at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah
Al-Aqsa struggles to cope with inflow of Deir el-Balah victims: Doctor
“We expect to receive many more by the ambulances that are still at the site,” he told Al Jazeera. “We are not equipped to receive such large numbers of victims,” he said, adding that the strike was part of Israel’s “genocide against our people”.
Palestinians wounded in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip are brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Friday
Air strike hits Rafah
We’re getting reports of an Israeli air raid hitting Rafah in the last 30 minutes, causing major destruction. Our colleagues on the ground are reporting many casualties with bodies scattered on the streets. We’re hearing that a house was targeted by Israeli aircraft in the vicinity of al-Dakhiliyah Street in the al-Geneina neighbourhood, which is in southern Rafah.
BREAKING: Israeli warplanes bomb a civilian house in the Al-Jeneina neighborhood in Rafah. pic.twitter.com/UMtNgyN7Nw
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) February 24, 2024
At least seven people have been killed and several others wounded in the attack in Rafah. The area that was hit is on a busy road leading to a market.
Palestinians attend to casualties, at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Rafah, Saturday
Rafah bombing victims ‘incinerated beyond recognition’
The air raid [carried out] within the past hour took place on a very busy road leading to a market and hit a two-story residential building. The area shook as if an earthquake hit it, there was complete destruction and fire everywhere. Cars were incinerated and people on the sidewalks were critically injured.
Victims were also pulled from the under the rubble for the building. Seven people were reported killed, five of whom have been identified. Two of them could not be identified as they were incinerated beyond recognition.
Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Rafah, Saturday
Israeli attacks hit eastern Rafah
Our colleagues at Al Jazeera are also reporting Israeli artillery shelling in the areas of Qaizan al-Najjar and Batn al-Sameen, in the southern city of Khan Younis. International concern has in recent weeks centred on Rafah, amid fears that an Israeli army ground invasion could displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the frontier with Egypt.
Israel has said it has no intention of displacing residents of Gaza across the border, but the majority of Gaza’s population is currently sheltered in Rafah, after being pushed there by Israel’s complete devastation of all other cities in the Strip.
Israeli forces hit Gaza City neighbourhood
Our colleagues at Al Jazeera are reporting an Israeli attack at Beach camp, locally known as Shati refugee camp, in Gaza City that has resulted in several deaths and injuries. Israeli forces have attacked the camp several times since the war began on October 7.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reports, citing local sources, that two Palestinians were killed in the attack and four others wounded. Israeli warplanes reportedly targeted a gathering of civilians in the camp, leading to the deaths.
Dead horses, scraps, leaves: Gaza’s hungry get desperate
At the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, Abu Gibril is so desperate for food to feed his family that he slaughtered two of his horses. “We had no other choice but to slaughter the horses to feed the children. Hunger is killing us,” the 60-year-old told the AFP news agency.
Food is running out, with aid agencies unable to get into the area because of the bombing and attacks on the few trucks that try to get through. Residents have taken to eating scavenged scraps of rotten corn, animal fodder unfit for human consumption and even leaves to try to stave off the growing hunger pangs.
The WFP said its teams reported “unprecedented levels of desperation” while the UN warned that 2.2 million people were on the brink of famine. “We the grown-ups can still make it but these children who are four and five years old, what did they do wrong to sleep hungry and wake up hungry?” Gibril said.
