Displaced Palestinians inspect their tents after an Israeli airstrike hit the Al Aqsa Hospital courtyard in Deir al-Balah, October 14, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

It was a few minutes past 1 a.m. on Oct. 14 when an Israeli warplane launched an airstrike into the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, where hundreds of displaced Palestinian families were sleeping in their tents. The attack set off a fire that quickly spread throughout the courtyard, consuming 40 tents in total — most made of highly flammable nylon and fabrics — before Gazan civil defense crews managed to bring it under control.

Four people, including a woman and a child, burned to death that night, and over 40 others suffered second- and third-degree burns. Among those killed were Alaa al-Dalou, 38, and her son Sha’ban, 19. Alaa’s 10-year-old son, Abd el-Rahman, was badly burned in the attack, and succumbed to his wounds on Friday.

A software engineering student, Sha’ban had been caught just a week prior in an Israeli airstrike that hit a nearby mosque, where Sha’ban was reading the Quran. He made it out with minor injuries and was recovering in his family’s tent on Monday night, when the blaze engulfed the courtyard and burned him alive.

According to Ahmed Al-Dalou, Sha’ban’s and Abd el-Rahman’s father, when the fire started to spread through the tent, he moved quickly to evacuate his family. “I took out my other three children who were badly burned and brought them to a safer place,” he told +972, “and returned to make sure that my wife and son Sha’ban came out.” Before leaving the tent, Ahmed recalls, “my wife and son told me that they would try to save some pieces of clothing. But they didn’t expect the fire to spread so fast.”

Ahmed doesn’t know what happened in those moments, but when he returned to the tent, Alaa and Sha’ban’s bodies had been consumed by the fire, and he could no longer recognize them. “I cannot forget the smell of their burning bodies,” he said. “It is stuck in my nose and mind. Every time I close my eyes, I see my wife and son burning.”

Sha’ban and Abd El-Rahman Al-Dalou. (Courtesy of the Al-Dalou family)

“Sha’ban used to narrate the Quran every night with a number of young people at the mosque. He used to sleep there in order to make more space for us inside the tent. He returned to our tent after the targeting of the mosque, only to be burnt here.

“Abd el-Rahman was badly injured and he died today [Oct. 18], while my other two daughters, Farah and Rahaf, are still in hospital. My son Mohammad survived the attack because he was sleeping in another tent with his friends. Now, I am staying at a tent of our relatives, because we lost everything.”

Originally from Gaza City, the Al-Dalou family had been displaced six times since the beginning of the war. “I was hoping Al-Aqsa Hospital would be our last displacement — I can’t afford to move again,” Ahmed told +972. “But this place turned out to be catastrophic.”

Raeda Wadi, a 47-year-old Palestinian and mother to seven girls, also spoke with +972 about the airstrike on the hospital courtyard, describing the scene as “the horrors of the Day of Judgment.” She and her daughters were sleeping in their tent when the missile landed just seven meters away. Raeda awoke to the sound of screaming, and her confusion quickly gave way to the realization that the “fire was devouring everything.”

As her tent burned down, she rushed out with her daughters and sought shelter in the hospital’s emergency department. But despite her quick reaction, she told +972 that “the flames injured my daughters Rawda and Shahd in different parts of their bodies.” They were transferred to the American Field Hospital, “because Al-Aqsa Hospital is unable to accommodate the large number of injuries with the lack of medical materials for burns.”

Displaced Palestinians inspect their tents after an Israeli airstrike hit the Al Aqsa Hospital courtyard in Deir al-Balah, October 14, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Raeda decided to take refuge in the hospital courtyard after being displaced from the Shuja’iya neighborhood, east of Gaza City. Her only son, 18-year-old Mohammad, was killed in an Israeli raid on Shuj’aiya on Dec. 12. She thought that Al-Aqsa would be safe because “all international conventions prohibit attacks on hospitals, but all these conventions were blown up by the Israeli army.”

Now, in the wake of Monday’s attack, Raeda doesn’t know how she’ll proceed. “I lost everything,” she told +972. “My daughters’ clothes, mattresses, blankets, kitchen items — everything I own.”

‘No one could say goodbye to my husband, because he no longer has a body’

Since the beginning of the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled to Deir Al-Balah, which has long been part of the so-called “humanitarian zone” where Israel had pushed Palestinian civilians to seek shelter.

According to Fakher Al-Kurd, Director of the Projects Department for the Deir Al-Balah Municipality, the city was home to 100,000 Palestinians before the war. But now, after repeated waves of displacement, and as the army lays siege to northern Gaza, Deir Al-Balah hosts more than “800,000 displaced people — and sometimes up to one million displaced if nearby [refugee camps] and Khan Younis get evacuation orders.”

This massive influx of displaced Palestinians, who have erected tents throughout Deir Al-Balah’s 16-square kilometers, has added an additional strain to a city that has sustained massive infrastructural damage over the course of the war.

Palestinians at the site of a destroyed Mosque from an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, October 6, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

“Eight out of the 21 water wells owned by the municipality were completely destroyed, as well as two of the municipality’s four main water tank reservoirs,” Al-Kurd noted. “This has caused a 50 percent shortage of water needed to meet the minimum needs of the population and the displaced.” Al-Kurd added that the sewage system has been severely damaged due to repeated shelling in the city, leading to “a continuous flow of sewage in different areas.”

Monday’s airstrike was only the latest in a line of Israeli attacks on civilian buildings in Deir Al-Balah — further proof that, despite any claims about humanitarian areas, safety is nowhere to be found in Gaza. According to medical sources at Al-Aqsa Hospital, 200 people have been killed across Deir Al-Balah and registered at the hospital since the beginning of this month.

The Rufaida School in the city’s center had been serving as a shelter for displaced Palestinian families when it was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Oct. 10, killing 32 people, including 17 women and children, and injuring nearly 70.

Among those who were killed in this attack was Ahmed Adel Hammouda, 58, a father of seven from Beit Lahiya, who was displaced to the school on the fifth day of the war. As one of the first to arrive, Hammouda became well-known among other displaced families at the school, and was appointed as an administrator to help manage the needs of those sheltering there. According to his wife, when the school was hit, the rocket barreled through three floors before exploding in the administration room, where her husband was “busy registering new residents of the school, trying to obtain an appointment to fill gas, and receiving food parcels.”

“No one could say goodbye to my husband, because he no longer has a body: after the attack, only his feet remained,” Hammouda’s wife told +972, in tears. “How can I go on with my life? He was responsible for us, especially to meet the needs of our three girls with disabilities.” She fainted before the interview could be completed.

Palestinians at the site of an Israeli airstrike at the Rufaida School, in Deir al-Balah, October 10, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Dr. Mahmoud Kamel Suleiman Abu Taym, 28, and Dr. Ghaida Yousef Muhammad Abu Rahma, 24, were also killed in that airstrike. They were part of a volunteer medical team who came regularly to the school to treat the wounded and sick, to transfer patients who needed more intensive care to the hospital, and to distribute hygiene materials, sterilizers, diapers, and special food for malnourished children.

In the same attack, 14-year-old Sahar Raed al-Asmar was severely injured. Sahar, a displaced girl from Al-Shati Camp in western Gaza City, had been living in a tent with her family at Al-Nakheel camp in Deir Al-Balah, and traveled to the school daily to collect their food parcels. When Sahar’s parents heard the explosion, they rushed to the school, frantically searching for her for over two hours. Unable to find her, they went to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where they were told their daughter was seriously injured and undergoing surgery.

“She was always so active, always helping us,” her father told +972. “Now she’s in a coma with severe brain injuries. She needs treatment outside Gaza; the hospitals in Gaza can’t provide what she needs.”

Nesma Zeidan, 34, had also gone to the Rufaida School last Thursday when she was alerted that she could pick up a parcel of hygiene products there. “My family were very happy when we got this message. My kids haven’t bathed with shampoo for a long time — they all suffer from skin diseases.” But this joy did not last: a few minutes after she entered the school and asked about the location of the administration room, “there was a strong explosion. I flew from the power of the explosion and felt that I was burning.”

“I have shrapnel in my body and burns. The doctor told me that the shrapnel will come out on its own, but I have to buy creams for the burns, and I don’t have the money.” Nesma also lost her phone in the attack, and was unable to contact her family to let them know that she had survived.

When she spoke with +972, Nesma was waiting in the hospital and hoping that her family would come to look for her. She also could not help but think about the reaction of her children when she returns home without the hygiene parcel. “I do not know who will care for them while I am wounded.”

+972 contacted the IDF Spokesperson for comment on this report; their response will be added here if received.

Ibtisam Mahdi

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