Family tell of seeing mother and son burned to death in Gaza hospital blaze

The brother of a teenage Palestinian computing student who burned to death in a blaze sparked by an Israeli strike on a Gaza hospital compound has described how he tried to save his injured sibling as flames engulfed tents.

“I heard the sound of bombing, I looked out and saw very black smoke next to our tent,” said Mohammed al-Dalou, speaking to Reuters at the location of the strike in Deir al-Balah, where charred ground and twisted debris lay between still standing tents.

Dalou, 17, said he ran out of the tent and saw his father pulling his younger siblings from the flames. When he tried to reach his older brother Shaban, people held him back, he said.

Three other people died, including Dalou’s mother, Ala’a Abdel Nasser al-Dalou, 37. “I can’t describe the feeling. I saw my brother burning in front of me and my mother was burning,” Mohammed said.

Footage taken by witnesses on mobile phones shows 19-year-old Shaban, who was being treated for an injury, lying on his back on a bed, frantically waving his arms before being engulfed by the blaze. The images, which have been viewed by millions around the world since the attack on Monday, have prompted further outrage at a time when Israel faces acute concern from allies about its conduct of the war in Gaza.

Dalou’s aunt Karbahan al-Dalou and her family were also at the hospital. “I suddenly woke up to fire burning towards me and my children,” she said at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis where her family had been taken after the fire. She said she saw her nephew and sister-in-law burning and waving their hands. “I can’t describe to you how disturbing it was.”

Shaban’s father, Ahmad al-Dalou, who was severely burned, told Al Jazeera he was able to save two children before the fire “just engulfed everything”. “I couldn’t rescue anyone [else] … I did what I could,” Dalou told the Qatar-based network, adding that Shaban was a “studious boy” who had memorised the Qur’an and once wanted to become a doctor.

Israel says the attack targeted a Hamas command and control centre at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital and that it is investigating the cause of the blaze but believes it was probably started by a secondary explosion.

Israeli military officials said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a command and control centre in the area of a parking lot [next to the hospital]”.

“The IDF is taking numerous steps to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence,” the Israeli military said.

Israeli officials have not said what might have caused a secondary explosion to ignite the tents.

A medic at the hospital told Reuters that cooking gas canisters exploded in the fire, which Reuters could not immediately independently confirm.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said on Wednesday she had “watched in horror … images of what appeared to be displaced civilians burning alive following an Israeli airstrike [in Gaza]”.

She said: “Israel has a responsibility to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties, even if Hamas was operating near the hospital in an attempt to use civilians as human shields.”

Hamas denies that any militants were present or that it uses hospitals for military purposes.

Like most others in Gaza, the Dalou family have been displaced multiple times. Shaban al-Dalou had posted video clips to social media describing the physical and mental impact of harsh living conditions in the territory since the war began more than a year ago, and how he hoped to escape to Egypt.

The attack on the hospital compound comes amid renewed fighting and airstrikes across much of Gaza. Tens of thousands of civilians are still trapped in Jabaliya in northern Gaza by a major Israeli offensive against Hamas fighters who have returned to the neighbourhood in recent months.

The Israeli military says it has killed more than 50 fighters in recent days in airstrikes and close-quarters combat as troops try to destroy Hamas forces.

Israel has ordered people to evacuate to what are supposedly safer areas in the south, fuelling fears among Palestinians that it aims to remove them from northern Gaza permanently as part of a plan to control the territory. Many refused to comply or were unable to move.

Israel has denied that the evacuation orders are part of a systematic clearance plan, saying they have been issued to ensure people’s safety and separate them from militants.

Hospitals have received about 350 bodies since the offensive in Jabaliya began on 6 October, according to Dr Munir al-Boursh, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry. He said more than half of the dead were women and children, and many bodies remained in the streets and under the rubble, with rescue teams unable to reach them because of Israeli strikes. “Entire families have disappeared,” he said.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said on Wednesday that at least 42,409 people had been killed in the war so far. The conflict has left large areas in ruins and displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people, forcing hundreds of thousands into crowded tent camps or schools that have been turned into shelters.