As dawn broke on Thursday, Haitham Abu Ammar rummaged through the rubble of the school that had provided shelter for him and thousands of others fleeing Gaza, spending hours helping to piece together the limbs of his loved ones.
“The most painful thing I've ever experienced was picking up pieces of flesh with my hands,” said Abu Amar, a 27-year-old construction worker. “I never thought I'd have to do this.”
An Israeli airstrike struck a school compound early Thursday, killing dozens of people, including at least nine militants, the Israeli military said.
Over the course of the day, bodies and severed limbs retrieved from the rubble were wrapped in blankets, piled onto trucks and taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital, the last major medical facility still operating in central Gaza.
The Israeli military described the airstrike as carefully planned, and Maj. Gen. Daniel Hagari told reporters that Israeli forces had been pursuing the militants for three days inside the school, which had been converted into a shelter, before opening fire.
“The Israeli army and Israeli intelligence have found a solution to separate terrorists from those seeking refuge,” he said.
But reports from local and international medical personnel, as well as a hospital visit by The New York Times on Thursday afternoon, revealed that civilians also died.
Outside the hospital morgue, people gathered to weep and pray for the dead, and the hospital's corridors were filled with people seeking help, or at least a little comfort.
“Mommy! Mommy!” the little girl with bloody feet cried, as her crying mother followed her down the hospital corridor.
The exact death toll could not be confirmed, but Gaza's Health Ministry said 14 were children and nine were women of the roughly 40 people killed in the attack. Later that day, The Associated Press, citing a hospital morgue, gave a different figure, saying at least 33 people were killed, including three women and nine children.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital has become a symbol not only of the high number of deaths in central Gaza, but also of the growing desperation among Gazans struggling to find safety.
In the past few weeks, the area has been flooded with people fleeing renewed Israeli attacks on the southern city of Rafah, which before that began was the main refuge for civilians and at one time was home to more than half the Gaza Strip's population.
Then on Wednesday, Israel announced it had launched a new operation against Hamas militants in central Gaza, the very place where many Gazans who fled Rafah ended up.
The attack on the school took place early the following morning, at around 2 a.m., and hit a building within a compound run by UNRWA, the main UN aid agency for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The schools have been used as refuge for Gaza residents displaced by fighting since Israel launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip in October in retaliation for Hamas-led attacks on Israel. Israel alleges that Hamas is hiding forces in civilian locations such as schools and hospitals, a charge Hamas denies.
Medical workers said Al-Aqsa had suffered 140 deaths and hundreds more wounded over the past two days of the new military operation.
“There are so many dead and injured people and we are running out of medical supplies to treat them – it's total chaos,” said Karin Hastur, a nurse for the international aid group Doctors Without Borders who works at the hospital.
When The Times visited Al-Aqsa, medical workers were seen pushing through throngs of panicked people to reach operating rooms, which delayed their arrival. In the chaos, Hastur said, medical workers sometimes rushed people with fatal injuries into the operating rooms, wasting precious time for those who might still survive.
Huster said the majority of those he has treated over the past few days have been women and children.
Earlier on Thursday afternoon, Abu Ammar returned to the hospital after burying a friend he had rescued from the rubble of the school compound.
This time, he was accompanied by his friend's younger brother, who they had tried to push into a hallway near the entrance, with the brother's face sliced open by shrapnel and a deep cut on his right leg.
But he wasn't the only one desperate for help.
All around us were the injured, some bloodied and lying on the floor, others crying out for help in their beds. One man, his face blackened by burns and dust from the morning's explosion, asked two relatives who were with him to fan his face with a piece of cardboard.
The situation in the morgue for the dead was just as chaotic as that of the living: bodies were strewn everywhere, relatives huddled together, wailing, and the stench of blood was strong.
The crowd outside the morgue ebbed and ebbed as bodies, wrapped in blankets – cloth was in short supply – were loaded onto pickup trucks and taken away for burial. Relatives and friends lined up to say prayers before the bodies were taken away. Passersby stopped to join in.
“When is too much?” Huster said. “I don't know what to do with a statement that will shock people anymore. Where did humanity go wrong?”
