Scores of families sheltering outside Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital say they have survived a string of Israeli strikes on the compound and feel trapped with nowhere to go.
This was not the first time that displaced Gazans camping on the grounds of Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital awoke to Israeli strikes on the place where they were trying to find safety. But Monday’s strike overshadowed any they had survived before: flames jumping from tent to tent, shrieks of agony and bodies so charred they were unrecognizable.
“It is like living inside a recurring nightmare. Every time we sleep, we wake up to this same scenario of tents struck, people screaming,” said Mahmoud Wadi, a 20-year-old whose extended family had been living on the hospital grounds for months.
Mr. Wadi said this was the seventh strike on the hospital his family had witnessed since setting up a tent outside the facility. This time, instead of awakening in a daze to the sight of smoke rising from one spot in the camp, the heat of flames was everywhere, he said. He saw bodies “scorched and black, like giant lumps of coal.”
The Wadi family is one of scores of families that have set up camp in the parking lot of the compound, hoping that international laws prohibiting attacks on hospitals made the area a safe place to shelter. Instead, these families say, they have survived repeated strikes on the hospital. The latest attack, shortly after 1 a.m. on Monday, triggered a fire that set the camp ablaze.
The Israeli military said in a statement posted to social media that it had been targeting a Hamas command center located near the hospital. The fire that erupted afterward was likely caused by secondary explosions, it said.
