Julud Shalaq, a displaced Gazan, holds a small child with a bandaged head and wounds on his face. “He is the only one of the family who has survived,” she explains. “Him and his mother. The rest are gone [han muerto], about 14. Even more than 14, because there is among the rubble. The streets are full of corpses.” It is one of the stories, collected by the Al Jazeera television network, that have been coming to light of the massacre caused on Saturday by the Israeli army in the Nuseirat refugee camp to free four hostages in a surprise operation in the hundreds of soldiers participated. While Israel is excited about the success of the rescue (the largest of the war), the Gazans have been discovering its price as the hours go by. Although the balance is not clear, it is one of the largest massacres in eight months of war.
On Sunday, the Ministry of Health of the Hamas Government in Gaza raised the death toll to 274 (64 of them children and 57 women) and the number of wounded to 698. Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari admitted he was aware of a death toll “below 100.” “I don’t know how many of them are terrorists,” he clarified. A day later, another army spokesman, Peter Lerner, refused to give figures or confirm civilians among the victims: “Hamas doesn’t know how many people died, we don’t know how many people died.”
The victims were transferred to two hospitals: Al Awda, which had already had to install an extension and has reported receiving 116 bodies; and Mártires de Al Aqsa, which depends on a single electrical generator to function, has been operating above its capacities for months and collapsed after receiving up to 94 deaths. “Total chaos,” in the words of Karin Huster, medical officer for Doctors Without Borders at Al Aqsa Martyrs, with the emergency room “completely packed with patients on the ground from the Nuseirat bombings.” In a short time, up to hundreds of wounded people gathered, including children and women, with “the entire range of war wounds,” she said in an audio whose content was released by the NGO. The Ministry of Health asked people to come and donate blood and regretted that the ambulances could not respond to requests for help.
The images that have been broadcast by television channels with a presence on the ground (Israel prevents access to the international press) and by witnesses on social networks show intense aerial bombardments that generate columns of smoke, as well as buildings in ruins and dead and injured people. on the floor. Artillery and repeating rifle fire can also be heard in the background, while dozens of civilians run for cover, scream in fear or try to record with their cell phones.
“The shelling and gunshots came from all directions. He didn’t even know what the origin was. I am 32 years old and I never thought I would live a moment like this,” recalled Mohamed Al Tahrani, one of the residents of the refugee camp. Three unidentified children cry uncontrollably on camera in nearby Deir el Balah as they explain that they come from the Al Dawa mosque area, which is in Nuseirat, an hour’s walk away. “We went to buy bread and they did this to us,” explains one, referring to the bombings. They don’t know where their parents are.
Another resident of Nuseirat, Nidal Abdo, who was shopping at the market, estimated that there were around 150 bombs that fell in less than 10 minutes. “While we were fleeing, others fell on the market,” he told CNN. A boy crying in a video (in which his name is not revealed) says that he saw his friend die when they were riding a bicycle together: “We saw death with our own eyes. I was at the Abu Sarar roundabout [una de las zonas de Nuseirat bombardeadas], they bombed and he died on the bicycle.” There is an image of a dead child in the middle of the road still on the bicycle.
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The armed wing of Hamas, the Ezedin al Qasam Brigades, has assured that the army killed three hostages (of the 120 remaining in Gaza) in the bombings to free four and that one also has American nationality. Shortly after, he released a video of psychological warfare in which three bodies can be seen blurred, but without being able to determine their identities or cause of death. The Israeli army has “categorically” denied this.
The Israeli Armed Forces have admitted that they opened fire on land, sea and air, as various militiamen tried to prevent the rescue – in which a border police officer lost his life – with intense fire from all directions. The undercover Israeli troops were discovered and word spread. In the images, Palestinians are seen fleeing the bombed area while shouting to the rest to stay away because there are “violent explosions” and “special forces.”
Those “special forces” were mistaravimthose who learn to blend in with the Arabs to infiltrate Palestinian territory, portrayed in the well-known television series Fauda. They carried mattresses in the vehicle to pose as one of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people from the Rafah area (where Israel began an offensive last month) who were looking to rent an apartment in Nuseirat. Others were disguised as Hamas militiamen.
The details revealed by Israeli television, witnesses and images of the vehicles outline the rescue operation, which lasted about two hours from the first bombings. They were in two vehicles, “a small Nissan brand; and a big truck,” according to what a witness told television. Israel has denied that the truck was humanitarian aid. In the images captured in the area it seems rather commercial.
Forces from an operational unit of the intelligence services and an elite unit of the border police then got out of the vehicles and moved quickly between tents while the aircraft continued bombing the area as support. “I was concerned that there would be a rain of fire at a relatively high rate to ensure that no one approached the vehicle,” the commander of the air mission, a captain identified only by the letter Alef, told the military correspondent of Channel 12 of the Israeli television, Nir Dvori. A drone killed a militiaman with a grenade launcher who was preparing to shoot at the truck.
The troops made a hole in a wall to access one of the two buildings. They entered the two apartments simultaneously to prevent anyone from notifying the other captors. In a building was Noa Argamani; in the other, about 200 meters away, the three men: Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv. The four had been taken hostage in the massive Oct. 7 attack on an open-air festival near Gaza that continued until dawn.
The evacuation vehicle had a technical problem and could not move off the street. In order not to be surrounded by militiamen, the army mobilized several tanks that were stationed nearby for emergency situations. The air force continued to bombard the entire area extensively, according to the captain. Fifteen minutes later, they towed the vehicle to the coast, where the helicopters that took the hostages out of Gaza were waiting for them. The United States has denied that it was through the temporary dock it has installed for the entry of humanitarian aid.
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