Photo by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) / AFP
Deir Al-Balah, Gaza Strip: An Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and triggered a fire that swept through a tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns, according to Palestinian medics.
Photo by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) / AFP
The Israeli military said it targeted Hamas fighters hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks.
Photo by Eyad Baba / AFP
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.
Several secondary explosions could be heard after the initial strike, but it was not immediately clear if they were caused by weapons or fuel tanks.
Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.
Video warning: Disturbing images
At least four Palestinians have been killed and several were injured in an Israeli air attack on tents housing forcibly displaced people in the yard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza's Deir el-Balah. pic.twitter.com/jLR3LwTPR2
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 14, 2024
Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 wounded. Twenty-five people were transferred to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Israel is still carrying out near-daily strikes across the Gaza Strip more than a year into the war, and has been waging a major ground assault in the north, where it says fighters have regrouped.
