A Palestinian man inspects the damage a day after an operation by the Israeli Special Forces in the Nuseirat camp, in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday.
The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to questions about the measures taken to prevent harm to civilians during the operation. A spokesman for the Israeli police, whose counterterrorism units played a key role in the raid, referred The Washington Post to the IDF.The full extent of the destruction in Nuseirat is still emerging, as Palestinian eyewitnesses share more details about the chaos of that day.
Abdel Hamid Ghorab, a 33-year-old paramedic, was working his Saturday shift at al-Awda, a maternity clinic that staff have converted to a makeshift hospital, home to both patients and displaced families.Ghorab said he helped move more than 100 seriously wounded patients — including children with missing and damaged limbs — to the larger Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where amputations could take place.
“Clearly they planned for this contingency, they had air support ready to go, they had ground support ready to go,” he said. “This was not unexpected.”The IDF chose to carry out the raid during the day to maximize the element of surprise, officials said. That also meant that Nuseirat’s narrow streets were packed with civilians.