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Video reveals devastation and grief after Gaza tent camp shelled
Gruesome images of a young Palestinian boy with part of his head blown off in what witnesses described as an Israeli tank strike last week have shocked even hardened observers of the war in Gaza.
Videos and photos showing a grief-stricken man holding up a boy, the flesh of his face hanging loose to reveal what appeared to be his hollowed out cranium, began to spread on social media on Wednesday.
NBC News’ crew in Gaza captured the moments that the body of the boy, eight-year-old Abdullah Samour, was carried into Nasser hospital in Khan Younis after the shelling. The violence unfolded in the area of nearby Bani Suheila on Wednesday afternoon, witnesses who said they survived the strike and Gaza’s Civil Defense Agency said.
Ahmed Harb Ahamed Samour, the man pictured carrying the child, said he was a relative of the devastated family and identified the young boy to NBC News.
A man and a woman mourn over the bodies of loved ones after an Israeli attack on Bani Suheila district of Khan Yunis on Wednesday.
At least nine people, including five children, two women and two men, were killed in the incident, the Civil Defense told NBC News.
The Israel Defense Forces said it could not comment on the specific incident without exact coordinates for the strike, which NBC News was unable to determine in the devastated tent camp. But it said its troops were “operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities” in after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks in which some 1,200 people, including hundreds of soldiers, were killed and around 250 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
On Wednesday, the IDF said in a statement that its troops were operating in the area of Khan Younis, the center of which is less than 1.5 miles from Bani Suheila. The IDF has not said exactly where its forces were when the tent encampment was hit.
Video captured by NBC News’ crew on the ground of the aftermath of the incident showed frantic scenes outside Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, with Palestinians racing to get victims into the medical facility.
Several bodies wrapped in blankets are lifted off the backs of multiple trucks and carried into the hospital, while children with serious injuries are also rushed into the hospital. One boy is pushed on a stretcher as blood pools around his head, while another can be seen with a severe wound below his chin.
Later, Abdullah is laid down on a steel table, his head, arms, torso and feet spattered with blood. Pink bulbous tissue the size of a small fist sticks out of his left side, and flies circle his body. The child’s arms are flung up above a mangled but recognizable face.
NBC News is not sharing the images of Abdullah due to their graphic nature.
Five witnesses of Wednesday’s strikes told NBC News that Israeli tanks had shelled the Palestinian encampment. Some also said “missiles” fell in the area.
A young boy cries in the back of a pickup truck transporting victims of an Israeli strike to the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Wednesday.
Ahamed Samour, the relative who carried Abdullah into Nasser hospital, told NBC News that his family had been eating lunch when he saw “projectiles raining down.”
“Children, children, youngsters, and elderly, 60 and 50 years old. They were eating lunch with their children,” Samour said. He said those killed had had no ties to Hamas.
“Did Israel eradicate Hamas? No,” he said. “They eradicated our children, our fathers and our grandparents.”
He said that he and others had believed they had been in in a safe zone, but “there isn’t any ‘safe zone’ so far in the entirety of Gaza.”
More than 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza in Israel’s monthslong offensive, according to local health officials, which has shattered most of the enclave’s hospitals, homes and infrastructure.
While health officials in Gaza do not make a distinction between fighters and civilians, Israeli officials also estimate that thousands of non-combatants have been killed during the monthslong offensive. Meanwhile, journalists and humanitarian organizations have documented the devastating toll the war has taken on civilians.
At Nasser hospital, NBC News’ camera captured a man wailing over a young boy lying motionless in a plastic body bag. The child’s face is bloodied with one eye open. Others crowded around a row of body bags, some holding and kissing the faces of the dead.
Several other witnesses also described how they had been sitting in their tents or eating lunch when the shelling began.
“I swear, we were sitting, we had lunch, and we were sitting, and suddenly the jets are dropping projectiles,” one woman, who did not provide her name, said.
“They killed everyone,” she said.
Families mourn over the bodies of those killed by what witnesses described as Israeli tank fire in southern Gaza.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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