‘We smelled the stench of burning human flesh’: Israel burns 8 children to death in Gaza ‘safe zone’

Umm Ibrahim Abu Shaar, 49, sits in the European Hospital in Khan Younis, next to the bloodied bodies of her family members. They were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a tent encampment for the displaced in the Mawasi “safe zone” in ​​Khan Younis on Thursday morning, April 17. The tents caught fire and their occupants were burned alive. This scene has become a regular occurrence in Gaza.

At the site of the bombing west of Khan Younis, residents gathered around the bombed tents, which were reduced to piles of ash and scraps mixed with blood. They try to collect the remains of the martyrs, walking beside the bombed tents with extreme care and caution.

Residents and rescue teams retrieved 15 bodies, including those of eight children. All of them were charred black. Among them was a mother and her three children who were burned beyond recognition, according to eyewitnesses who spoke to Mondoweiss. 

The Civil Defense described it as a heinous crime that took the lives of 15 martyrs, “most of them women and children.”

Yousef Abu al-Rus, a witness to the bombing, said via video testimony for Mondoweiss that the Israeli army targeted four tents inhabited by four families with a single missile. He described how the missile sparked an intense fire that residents could not extinguish.

“We heard the sound of an explosion, and then intense and strong flames erupted,” Abu al-Rus said. “We couldn’t get close enough to help them. We got as close as we could, but we saw the women and children burning and dying right before our eyes. We saw them, and our children saw and heard everything.” 

Abu al-Rus continued with the harrowing account, describing how most of the neighboring families “smelled the stench of burning human flesh,” and how the types of missiles the Israeli army fired on the tents were like nothing he’d ever seen, burning everything, even the metal utensils inside the tents. “They’re deadly weapons. They melted the aluminum cooking utensils inside. How would they affect the body of a small child no more than three years old?” Abu al-Rus said.

 “The bodies were completely blackened. Only the skeletons remained. Even the bones were melted,” he continued.

Abu al-Rus noted that the families were sleeping in tents after returning from congratulating a relative on his wedding. They returned to their tents and went to sleep, and never woke up.

“They said this was the safe zone where we must stay to save our lives,” Abu al-Rus exclaimed. “It was a trap to kill and burn us. Where do we go to be safe? We bury our children as skeletons and melted bones.”

The Israeli bombardment of tents and displacement centers in various areas of the Gaza Strip continued throughout the day. The Gaza Ministry of Health’s daily report on April 17 said that 40 people were killed in the last 24 hours.

The Civil Defense stated that its rescue crews had recovered six other martyrs and a number of wounded in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza after a tent sheltering the displaced was also targeted on the same day. This was followed by the targeting of the al-Ayyoubiya School in north Gaza, in addition to dozens of massacres targeting families who were killed in their homes across the strip.

Among the martyred were three children belonging to the al-Atal family in the Beit Lahia tent bombings. Witnesses from the scene told Mondoweiss via recorded testimony that the Israeli army killed them by dropping a bomb over their heads from a quadcopter drone. 

Marwan al-Atal, a relative of the martyrs in Beit Lahia, said that the majority of the martyrs were children and that they were dismembered. 

“Let’s assume that one of the people in this tent is wanted by Israel; why are they killing children alongside him?” Marwan asks. “Couldn’t they have killed him away from the children, somewhere else? Why send a plane to kill the children? Is this what Netanyahu and Israel are doing, killing children sleeping in their tents? Is this their military achievement?”