The Israeli raid caught everyone off guard, from the Hamas militants guarding four hostages in two different buildings to the thousands of civilians who soon found themselves running for their lives through a blistering crossfire
They arrived in the middle of the day, when the squat concrete buildings of the Nuseirat refugee camp are stifling and the narrow streets outside are filled with people. No one suspected a thing until the shots rang out.caught everyone off guard, from the Hamas militants guarding four hostages in two different buildings to the thousands of civilians who soon found themselves running for their lives through a blistering crossfire.
They had been moved among different locations but were never held in Hamas’ notorious tunnels. At the time of their rescue they were in locked rooms guarded by Hamas gunmen. Israeli intelligence figured out where they were and commandos spent weeks practicing the raid on life-size models of the buildings, according to Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman.
The commandos sprang from the truck and one of them threw a grenade into the house. “Clashes and explosions broke out everywhere,” he said. Palestinian militants armed with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades opened fire on the rescuers, as Israel called in heavy strikes from land and air to cover their evacuation to the coast. “A lot of fire was around us,” Hagari said.Mohamed al-Habash, another displaced Palestinian, was in the Nuseirat market looking for humanitarian aid or inexpensive food when the heavy bombing began. He took cover with a half-dozen other people in a damaged home. He said many other houses were hit.
Footage released by the military showed soldiers walking the hostages along the beach toward the water and helicopters whipping up clouds of sand as they took off.At the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah, the dead and wounded arrived in waves – men, women and children. It’s one of the last functioning medical facilities in the area and was already packed with people wounded in heavy strikes in recent days.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 274 Palestinians were killed and around 700 were wounded. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tallies, but said the dead included 64 children and 57 women.
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