Eyewitness describes horrific scenes after Israeli strike on Rafah camp

In a speech to Parliament on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Rafah strike a “tragic accident.” This is a departure from public statements by the Israeli military, which previously referred to a targeted strike on a Hamas compound using “precise munitions” and “precise intelligence.”

The Israeli military said two militants were killed in the attack, including the commander of Hamas’s West Bank operations. “Numerous measures were taken before the attack to minimize damage to those not involved,” the Israeli military said Monday, adding that the incident was under investigation.

A White House National Security Council spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic, said the Rafah images were “heartbreaking.” “Israel has the right to attack Hamas,” the spokesperson said, highlighting the deaths of the two militants, but “Israel must take all possible precautions to protect civilians.”

The United States has not yet taken a public position on Friday’s decision by the International Court of Justice ordering an immediate end to the Israeli offensive in Rafah. Nearly a million Palestinians have been displaced this month, the vast majority from Rafah, which was the last refuge for tens of thousands of families.

On Sunday evening, one of the most horrible scenes of the war took place.

Mohammad Al-Haila, 35, was heading to a local vendor to buy goods when he saw a huge flash followed by successive booms. Then he saw the flames.

“I felt like my body was frozen because of fear,” Haila, displaced from central Gaza, told the Washington Post by telephone.

He ran to the area looking for relatives.

“I saw flames rising, charred bodies, people running everywhere and cries for help getting louder and louder,” he said. “We were powerless to save them.”

Haila lost seven relatives in the attack. The oldest was 70 years old. Four were children.

“We were only able to identify them this morning because of the charred bodies,” he said. “The faces were eroded and the features completely disappeared. »

Ahmed Al-Rahl, 30, still hears the screams.

He and his family were getting ready for bed when they heard several large explosions, said Rahl, displaced from the north. Their tent shook. Massive confusion engulfed the camp.

“No one knew what to do,” he said. “The children who were with their families in these tents rushed to us, asking us to save their parents who were burning. »

Rahl had a fire extinguisher and rushed to help.

“I didn’t know what to do to help people while they were burning,” he said. Around him, there were “dismembered bodies, charred bodies, headless children, bodies as if they had melted,” he said.

There was no water to put out the fire, which consumed the fabric and plastic tents. Gas canisters used for cooking exploded, Rahl said.

“I saw with my own eyes someone burning and screaming for help and I couldn’t save their life,” he said.

Mohammad Abu Shahma, 45, rushed to see his extended family when he heard the fire was spreading. His brother’s tent was about 400 meters from the worst carnage. Shahma thought he should be safe.

He found his brother, father of 10 children, and his 3-year-old niece, Palestine, dead. There was blood everywhere, Shahma said. Shrapnel had hit his brother in the chest and neck; the child had been hit in the head. Another girl, Jana, 9, was injured.

On Sunday, around 10 p.m., the dead and wounded began to flood into the few field clinics in the region.

Twenty-eight people died upon arrival at a temporary emergency trauma center run by Doctors Without Borders less than three kilometers from the site of the strike, according to Samuel Johann, the group’s emergency coordinator in Gaza. The clinic treated another 180 patients suffering from severe burns, shrapnel wounds, missing body parts and other traumatic injuries, he said.

Further west, at a clinic run by International Medical Corps, plastic surgeon Ahmed al-Mokhallalati described family members desperately searching for their loved ones.

A little girl, he said, asked everyone she passed if they had seen her parents. Mokhallalati said they were among the dead.

Many people arrived with horrific injuries and required amputations, he said, as shrapnel tore through the camp and pierced tents. Over the course of a grueling, relentless night, he and his colleagues conducted surgeries lasting at least 12 hours, Mokhallalati said.

They lacked medical gloves, gowns and other basic supplies to treat open wounds. “We are literally lacking everything,” he said.

Patients needing additional care had few places to go, he said. Rafah’s two main hospitals were evacuated. Kuwait’s smallest hospital announced Monday that it had had to close its doors after repeated attacks. One of the only options left was the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, located a few kilometers in central Gaza.

Mokhallalati said he operated on a 6-year-old girl with deep shrapnel wounds that extended from her thigh to her abdomen. She died Monday morning, he said.

The Tal al-Sultan makeshift camp was outside Israel’s designated evacuation zone in Rafah, and residents were not ordered to leave before the strikes.

The area was on the edge of, but not included in, a map of humanitarian zones provided by the IDF online and in recent announcements. However, Gaza residents, who lack bandwidth and cell phone batteries, often rely on word of mouth and Arabic-language pamphlets distributed by the IDF for information. Residents complain that evacuation orders and accompanying maps are confusingly written and difficult to follow. Many thought they were in a safe place.

In its statement, the Israeli military said “the attack did not take place in the Al Mawasi humanitarian zone”, referring to a coastal region northwest of Rafah where it ordered the evacuation .

New arrivals to Mawasi told the Post that the area is desolate, overcrowded and lacking even the most basic services. Some families, many of whom have already been uprooted several times during the war, have decided to stay in Rafah.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday he was “outraged by the Israeli strikes which killed many displaced people” and called for “an immediate ceasefire”.

Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly also demanded a ceasefire, saying “this level of human suffering must end.” A ministry spokesperson said the country was following up on reports that two Canadian citizens were among the dead in Rafah.

The German Foreign Ministry, one of Israel’s strongest supporters in Europe, said in a statement published on X on Monday that the images of the attack were “unbearable” and that “the civilian population of Gaza must urgently be better protected.”

Shahma spent Monday packing her bags. His extended family of 50 had decided that the women and children would move to Mawasi, he said, and the men would stay in nearby Khan Younis.

“We haven’t even found time to mourn those we lost,” he said. “All that matters to us now is saving those who remain. »

Haila spent the day searching the charred corpses at the Tal al-Sultan clinic for any signs of her missing family members.

“What we experience in this life cannot be described,” he said. It was like being “on the waiting list” to die.

Harb reported from London. Sarah Dadouch in Beirut, Rachel Pannett in Sydney, Niha Masih in Seoul, Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv, Hazem Balousha in Cairo and Tyler Pager in Washington contributed to this report.