‘Ruins of life’: Aid worker describes scenes of destruction in north Gaza
Philippa Greer, the head of legal affairs at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), posted footage from northern Gaza City showing the scale of destruction wrought by Israel’s war on the enclave.
The video, taken from a moving vehicle and posted on X, showed destroyed roads and buildings flattened and reduced to rubble.
Greer described seeing Palestinians struggling to carry their belongings in the sun, including “a man carrying a white flag in front of his family” and “women about to collapse, dragging bags over the ground, walking backwards, stopping and closing their eyes”.
Greer also said she saw “a man on the ground in underwear, with soldiers near the checkpoint” and “a woman presumably crossing with him, stalled, distraught, in desperation”.
Today entering Gaza City. The ruins of life. A donkey laying dead attached to a cart with someone’s possessions. Clusters of people crossing to the South, with too much to walk with under the sun and given the length of the journey. A man carrying a white flag in front of his… pic.twitter.com/O4EDyiM1tC
— Philippa Greer (@philippa_bear) November 9, 2024
Witnesses recount Israel’s attack on Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Hospital
We’ve been covering a deadly Israeli attack on tents sheltering displaced Palestinians on the grounds of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah. Survivors said they had taken refuge in the hospital’s grounds hoping they would be safe there, but that they had been wrong.
“This is the eighth attack since I came here,” said Om Mohammed Wadi, a displaced Palestinian. “My tent, together with a lot of other tents, was burned three weeks ago. We are defenceless civilians. We are not terrorists. We are displaced people who want nothing but security and safety.”
A tent sheltering Palestinian reporters was also hit, wounding several.
“We were a tent full of journalists,” said Moustafa Jaarour. “I had left to interview a young girl and all of a sudden, a helicopter launched a missile without any warning. The missile targeted all these tents. Several of us journalists were injured.”
People carry a casualty near a fire at the site of an Israeli strike on a tent housing displaced people, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, November 9
