Israel attacked Rafah at night, “all the people burned” | Israeli-Palestinian conflict

A little girl in pink pajamas lies on a blood-stained bed at the Kuwait Specialty Hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza. Her face is confused and she blinks repeatedly.

Shrapnel left a gaping wound in her torso that was hastily bandaged when she arrived at the hospital. Now doctors are frantically trying to decide whether to remove some of the gauze to continue treating her.

Her parents stand around her with their two other small children in their arms, trying to get the attention of the overworked paramedics.

Nearby, a girl in a soaked red hoodie screams and shakes in pain as a paramedic tries to find a vein in her emaciated arm.

An older woman next to her tries to comfort the screaming girl, but the girl has her eyes closed and is writhing in pain. She clenches her teeth between screams.

A few beds away, a toddler with blood on her hair is unconsciously breathing in and out while doctors hastily stitch up her head. She is panting heavily and lets out a small cry every now and then.

Nearby, several paramedics carry the lifeless body of a young boy, wearing shorts and a matching blood-soaked T-shirt, onto a hospital bed before it is wrapped in a white sheet and packed for burial.

An older man approaches the boy, who is now wrapped in the white cloth, kneels down beside his bed and, full of desperation, repeatedly hits his white crown of hair.

These are the scenes at the hospital in the Gaza Strip following Israeli air strikes late Sunday on a camp of displaced Palestinians in the Tal as-Sultan area near Rafah – an area declared a security zone.

When Israeli rockets hit the camp during the night, a fire quickly spread, razing the camp to the ground and killing at least 45 people, according to Gaza authorities.

As paramedics desperately tried to treat the injured and cover the dead, reports emerged of an Israeli drone attack on the hospital entrance, killing two staff members.

Charred bodies, torn off limbs

When Dr. Muhammad al-Mughayer of the Palestinian Civil Defense arrived at the scene of the attack, the fire was still burning.

“The fires were very big and spread everywhere,” al-Mughayer told Al Jazeera.

Most of those killed suffered severe burns to their bodies, he added.

As al-Mughayer’s team worked to rescue survivors and recover bodies, they came across charred bodies and people whose limbs had been torn off.

The Wafa news agency quoted the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) as saying that many of the dead were “burned alive” in their tents.

According to the Israeli military, high-precision weapons were used in the attack and a Hamas compound in Rafah was targeted “on the basis of precise intelligence information.”

In addition to the other Palestinians killed, Hamas’s chief of staff for the West Bank and another high-ranking Hamas official were also killed in the attack, the military said.

The army said it was “aware” of reports that “several civilians in the area had been harmed.”

According to a review of the Israeli military’s evacuation orders in Rafah by Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency Sanad, the displaced Palestinians in the camp had not been ordered to go elsewhere.

Satellite images, which Sanad also reviewed, show that the shelter was built at the site of the attack in January, coinciding with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of displaced people from various other parts of the Gaza Strip in the area.

“The people were burned! They were burned!”

Many of those who sought refuge from the fighting in Tal as-Sultan are in great distress.

Back in the Kuwaiti hospital, amidst the panicked screams of the injured and the hectic activity of the doctors and nurses, a man lies on a hospital bed with an eerie calm.

His right leg is elevated and tightly bandaged after it was injured in the attack. He scrolls through his phone while injured children writhe in pain on the beds on either side of him.

“We were just walking around for an hour before the attack. Then there was the explosion… and I didn’t understand anything,” he told Al Jazeera, saying he, his brother and his son were injured in the airstrike.

“I saw that my leg was (injured) … (but) I didn’t know how bad it was.”

Like many Palestinians, the man was expelled from the besieged Strip several times during the war. One of his brothers was killed during the almost eight-month conflict.

“What happened is really hard and there is nothing we can do,” he said.

As he speaks, a friend rushes to his side.

“The people are burned! They were burned! They were all burned! What else can I say?” his friend shouts, throwing his hands in the air.

“The rocket(s) hit and exploded, and all the people burned to death.”

Near the now-burnt camp, a shaking boy named Amr is fighting back tears. He was in the toilet when the attack took place, he says, sobbing.

“It happened so quickly,” says Amr with a pained expression on his face.

“It just happened,” said the little boy, making an airplane shape with his hands. “None of us knew what had happened.”

“We are afraid, we are afraid,” the boy repeated, still stunned.