BUREIJ REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AP) — The faces of children rushed to Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza on Thursday were covered in a gray film, making it difficult to distinguish between the living and the dead.
Following two Israeli airstrikes that flattened an entire block of apartment buildings in the Bureij refugee camp and damaged two U.N. schools-turned-shelters, Palestinians covered in rubble, both young and old, arrived at an overcrowded hospital unable to accommodate them.
Motionless bodies, including tiny ones, lay flat on the hospital’s hard floor. Medics tried desperately to stop the bleeding from a small boy’s head as he lay on the tiles. Next to him, a baby with an oxygen mask struggled to breathe, his chest covered in ash. Their father sat beside them, screaming, “Here they are, America! Here they are, Israel! They are children. Our children die every day.”
In just under a month of fighting, more than 3,700 Palestinian children and minors have been killed, while bombings have forced over half of the territory’s 2.3 million people to flee their homes. The scarcity of food, water, and fuel adds to the dire situation.
As Israeli troops surround Gaza City and continue their ground offensive, the death toll is expected to rise.
The war was sparked by a brutal cross-border attack by the Hamas militant group on October 7, which claimed the lives of approximately 1,400 people in Israel and took 240 others hostage. Since then, over 9,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza. This marks the fifth and deadliest war between the two adversaries.
The reason for Israel’s targeting of Bureij, located in central Gaza, in an area where Israel had advised people to seek safety from heavy fighting further north, remains unclear.
The Israeli army claimed that airstrikes across Gaza were aimed at Hamas military command centers hidden in civilian areas. However, their statement did not specifically mention Bureij. Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
The strikes in Bureij on Thursday resulted in the deaths of at least 15 people, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense. Dozens of others are believed to be trapped under the rubble.
Paramedics and first-responders have faced challenges in evacuating the injured and the deceased due to damaged infrastructure and fuel shortages. Consequently, casualties are being transported to hospitals by relatives, neighbors, or anyone capable of helping.
In Bureij, home to approximately 46,000 individuals, Palestinians are desperately searching through the rubble for survivors. A young girl, found buried under the debris, was carried into the emergency room. Despite her bloody foot and ash-covered face, she insisted to the medics that she was fine.
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Frankel reported from Jerusalem.
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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
