“The entire camp has disappeared under the smoke and flames”, described by telephone to AFP Muhannad Thabet, a 35-year-old man, living in the Nousseirat refugee camp where this “difficult” operation took place on Saturday according to the Israeli army.
“I heard gunshots, I thought it was the usual exchanges, but very quickly I heard the sound of war planes and bombings falling on the camp, in the corner of al-Awda hospital and the market,” he continues, “and suddenly people started running in all directions, without knowing where to go.”
“Houses were destroyed while their occupants were still inside, many displaced people, shops and cars were on fire because of the bombings.”
“People were screaming, the youngest and the oldest, the men and the women,” he adds, “everyone wanted to run away, but to move also meant taking the risk of being killed in bombings and shootings.
In photos taken by an AFP photographer a few hours after the end of the operation, the streets of the camp are all covered in dust and debris.
From the roof of the building where he lives, Mohammed Moussa told AFP he was petrified when he saw an Israeli tank enter a street, accompanied by military drones, and covered by continuous artillery fire.
“I should be dead,” repeats this 29-year-old from Gaza and displaced, like many Gazans, several times during the fighting.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the Israeli army, said on Saturday that the hostages were in two different buildings, of three or four floors, specifying that the Israeli forces had found themselves under fire.
He also spoke of an operation “in the heart of a civilian neighborhood with armed terrorists”.
“I was walking towards the market when I saw a refrigerated truck and a white car,” Alaa al-Khatib, a displaced person living in the camp, told AFP. “People quickly came out with a ladder and went upstairs to a house and right after I heard shots and explosions.”
“I later learned that (Israeli) special forces had entered the camp in vehicles used for humanitarian aid,” she said.
Several other witnesses reported the same details to AFP, including the presence of a refrigerated truck.
“The special forces were dressed like people from Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and some were masked,” also testifies Mahmoud al-Assar, a 27-year-old Palestinian who compares the Israeli operation to “an earthquake.”
On Sunday, the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip, a territory controlled by Hamas, said it had recorded 274 dead and 698 injured, “including people in critical condition” after the operation in this densely populated refugee camp. people.
“The hospital was full of ‘martyrs’ and the wounded, and no one had the capacity to care for so many patients in such a short time,” explained Dr. Marwan Abu Nasser, an official at the al-Qaeda health center. Awda, near the camp.
“The hospital was under fire and no one could really move from here during the operation,” he added.
Several people living in the camp said they had seen corpses in the streets of the camp, which AFP could not verify.
The war was triggered on October 7 by the unprecedented Hamas attack in southern Israel, which resulted in the death of 1,194 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data. Israelis.
That day, 251 people were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. There are still 116 hostages held there, 41 of whom are considered dead, according to the Israeli army.
In retaliation, the Israeli offensive on Gaza killed at least 37,084 Palestinians, the majority civilians, according to data from the Ministry of Health of the government of this Hamas-led territory.
