In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Israeli missiles rained down on a designated “humanitarian zone” in the coastal area of Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis. For months, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have taken shelter there upon Israel’s orders to evacuate from almost everywhere else in the Gaza Strip. But even in this supposed sanctuary, safety for Palestinians is an illusion, and the displaced remain as vulnerable as ever.
For three harrowing hours, search-and-rescue teams, illuminated only by the dim glow of flashlights and the occasional flare of burning wreckage, sifted through the sand, desperate to find survivors. Instead, they unearthed the bodies of men, women, and children who were torn apart and buried under the very earth on which they had sought refuge. Tents were set ablaze, and the bombs left deep craters in the earth.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the airstrikes killed at least 19 people and wounded dozens more. It was Israel’s fifth attack on the area since designating it a place of refuge, and Tuesday’s bombings brought the total death toll from these attacks to more than 150.
The Israeli military claimed that it had “struck significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control centre embedded inside the humanitarian area.” Hamas denied the allegation.
One of the martyrs, Ahmed Al-Qadi, was only 3 years old. He had been living in Al-Mawasi with his mother and two siblings since early July, when Israeli forces invaded their neighborhood in Gaza City and arrested Ahmed’s father. On the night of the bombings, Ahmed’s mother, Fatima, was jolted awake by the sound of explosions.
“I woke up to a noise so loud that I thought it was the end of the world,” she told +972, her voice trembling. “When I looked around, my children were gone. I was surrounded by darkness, smoke, and screaming. I couldn’t see or breathe.”
Rescue workers found Ahmed hours later, buried under a mound of sand. His small body lay still, his face frozen in terror.
His two siblings, aged 6 and 8, survived the attack, but with severe injuries. “I found them covered in blood, their legs crushed,” Fatima recounted, tears streaming down her face. “Their upper bodies were above the sand, but their legs were trapped beneath it. I don’t know how we will ever recover from this.”
‘Israel is pursuing us to this area in order to bury us in the ground’
The Israeli army began directing Palestinians to Al-Mawasi in the first months of its bombardment of the Strip. Home to only 6,000 people before the war, it quickly swelled into a mass displacement camp accommodating hundreds of thousands in makeshift tents. Israel’s invasion of Rafah in May triggered a further influx of refugees to the coastal area.
Israa Al-Attar, 60, came to Al-Mawasi after her home in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, where she worked as a falafel seller, was destroyed. “I worked to raise my eight children so that they could obtain university degrees,” she told +972. “I built an eight-story building for them, so they could have separate apartments after they got married and had children.”
But in the first weeks of the war, the Israeli army decimated their home with a single airstrike. “The stones that the house was built from could describe the suffering I lived throughout my life,” she said.
Al-Attar was asleep next to her grandchildren when the intensity of several explosions on Tuesday morning woke her up. “We were close to it,” she recounted. “Stones and dust were scattered on us. Many people were injured from the falling shrapnel. Everyone was screaming and running and asking for help.”
Umm Tareq Al-Tawil, 44, also witnessed the massacre. She has been living in Al-Mawasi for the past five months after escaping Israel’s bombings in the Nasser neighborhood of Gaza City.
“The assault was brutal,” she told +972. “We heard five explosions that felt like an earthquake shaking the entire area. It was pitch black, and we were all asleep when the bombs fell. The children ran out, crying and terrified. People were torn to pieces, most of them women and children.”
“I rushed out of the tent with my husband and children, screaming, not knowing what was happening or where to go,” Al-Tawil continued. “Out of sheer terror and fear, I ran without even covering my hair, completely frightened and disoriented.
“We believed we were safe here, and there were no resistance fighters among us,” she affirmed. “I’ve been here for five months and haven’t seen any fighters in this area. Everyone here is either a woman, child, elderly person, or just ordinary people.”
Israel’s previous bombardment of Al-Mawasi, on July 13, was even deadlier: that attack killed 90 Palestinians, with Israel claiming it had targeted Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif. The extent of the destruction on Tuesday suggests that, like in that attack, the Israeli military dropped 2,000-pound bombs on the densely-packed tent camp.
For survivors, the latest massacre in Al-Mawasi has only reaffirmed their conviction that Israel is not actually fighting Hamas, but rather using that as an excuse to target Palestinian civilians and erase entire families from the civil registry. “Israel is pursuing us to this area in order to kill us and bury us in the ground,” Al-Attar said. “This is a war of extermination.”
A desperate search for survivors
The emergency response to Tuesday’s attack was hindered by a lack of equipment and infrastructure — the result of nearly a year of war in Gaza and a decade and a half-long siege.
Mohammed Badr, 30, who works in the Civil Defense, arrived in Al-Mawasi at 1 a.m. after receiving news of the massacre. The scene when he got there was like something out of a horror film. “There were body parts everywhere,” he recounted. “It was clear that entire families had been killed. A fire broke out in about 20 tents and there was a crater nine meters deep.”
In the darkness, Badr’s team struggled to search for survivors. “There was no lighting, so residents lit up the place with their phones,” he said. “The situation was difficult and everyone was crying, screaming, and checking on their family and relatives. We did not stop searching until daybreak.”
Ahmed, a 24-year-old volunteer paramedic (who preferred not to give his full name for fear of being targeted), was among the first responders to arrive at the scene, having been stationed nearby. “As soon as I arrived, I saw limbs scattered everywhere,” he recalled, his voice hoarse from exhaustion. “I’ve seen a lot of terrible things, but this… this was pure horror.”
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Ahmed and his team worked tirelessly, pulling bodies from the sand and hoping to find someone still alive. “We found a little girl, maybe 5 or 6 years old, buried up to her neck. She was still breathing, but barely. We managed to get her out, but she died on the way to the hospital. I keep thinking about her, about all the children we couldn’t save. I wonder if I could have done more.”
Badr echoed this sentiment. “This relentless targeting exhausts the Civil Defense because we have no capabilities to save people,” he lamented. “We stand helpless in the face of these massacres.”