Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – What had been quiet turned into a horrific series of Israeli airstrikes that killed at least 16 Palestinians and sent communities into a state of mourning throughout the central Gaza Strip.
In one incident, an entire family was wiped out while they were sleeping in a displacement camp in Deir el-Balah. The horror of the moment is given voice by Mahmoud Fayad, a local witness: “We woke up in the middle of the night due to a very loud explosion. We went running to where there were loud screams. Many civilians were killed – an entire family, man, wife and their children.
The attack on the camp of internally displaced persons revealed how such exposure of civilians to violence, while seeking shelter in what should be a protected area, went unnoticed. Reporting from the site of the attack, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud brought out the brutal truth: “Many people in the vicinity of the tent site were reported with various injuries.”
The first attack was not the end of strikes; later, even during the day, another Israeli air strike hit a residential house at al-Bureij camp, killing at least 11 people. It struck the eastern part of the camp, which gave no signal for warning, and it reduced the building into a heap of concrete, causing devastation around it.
Eyewitnesses reported a kind of chaos and despair never seen before. Attacks did not give prior notice; they were sudden surprises for the residents. Already displaced families hoped to settle into new havens, only to find themselves on the way to another unthinkable loss.
The human toll is just numbers. Behind every life lost stand a dead story. These are children who shall never see the light of the day, parents whose dreams will never be fulfilled, communities rent asunder by abrupt and violent loss.
Several injuries are confirmed alongside fatalities, which overwhelmed local medical staff in casualty care response. Even before this onslaught, Gaza’s already overstretched health and medical infrastructure now faces enormous challenges in providing care for those injured and in supporting grieving families.
Rather, these attacks are part of a continuum of conflict that has plagued the region for decades. Every further blow adds to the mounting civilian toll, raising fundamental questions about the nature of military operations and innocents within whose impact.
Such strikes, which disproportionately impact civilian populations, have been denounced on several occasions by international humanitarian groups. The protection of civilian life during war is a major ethical and legal problem when force is used in densely populated regions, especially in displacement camps.
As they deal with pain, grief, and the pressing difficulties of survival, the survivors are left to pick themselves up. Families now have to grieve for their departed loved ones while battling to obtain basic necessities and safety in a setting that is becoming more and more difficult.
The world community is watching these recent attacks with increasing anxiety as the dust settles. Civilians are disproportionately affected by the cycle of violence, which continues to claim a terrible human cost.
The accounts of those who perished—children caught in the crossfire, families sleeping in displacement camps—act as a sobering reminder of the real tragedy that goes on behind the news. Every name and every existence symbolizes a universe of possibilities that was violently and suddenly cut off.
A monument to human courage in the face of unfathomable tragedy, the Palestinian people’s tenacity is evident in the midst of this gloom.
