“This is my mother, my father, my aunt, my brothers,”
Mohammad al-Tabatibi, 19, told AFP, pointing to the bodies lined up in Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah.
In the central Gaza Strip, the al-Tabatibi family had been celebrating the first Friday of Ramadan and was preparing the morning meal before the fast when a strike killed 36 of them at dawn on Saturday.
“They bombed the house while we were inside,”
continued Mohammad al-Tabatibi.
My mother and my aunt prepared sohour
, the meal before dawn and the start of the fast.
“I don’t know why they bombed the house
,” said the young man, still in shock and with an injury to his left hand.
This house in the Nuseirat refugee camp housed several branches of the al-Tabatibi family, who came to take shelter there.
According to the Health Ministry of Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, 36 family members were killed in an air attack by the Israeli army during a
"bloody night"
marked in total, according to him, by 60 airstrikes.
Israeli army denies any involvement
The Israeli army said in a statement that it had targeted
“several terrorists holed up”
in the same Nuseirat camp.
Asked by AFP, she assured that the strike mentioned in this press release was
“another incident”
than that in which the al-Tabatibi family was killed and which she did not confirm was at the origin.
The Palestinian Red Crescent, for its part, indicated that airstrikes had
“targeted several houses”
in this camp during the night.
The strike that hit the al-Tabatibi house reduced much of it to ruins.
Youssef al-Tabatibi, a family member, said he was looking for missing people in the rubble.
“We are not able to trace some of the dead.
We lack equipment, bulldozers, machines, everything.
We must try to extract them with the strength of our hands alone.
We brought shovels and hammers, but in vain.
At Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, dozens of people gathered around the bodies, including those of at least two small children, wrapped in body bags or simple blankets, according to footage from the AFP.
Placed on the platform of a heavy goods vehicle usually dedicated to transporting humanitarian aid, these remains will then be taken to a nearby cemetery to be buried in a common grave.