Girl, 5, survives fiery aftermath of deadly Israeli strike on Gaza City school shelter
Paramedic recounts rescue, says there aren't enough body bags to place bodies in as deadly bombings continue
WARNING: This story contains details of bodies of children being burned.
Harrowing video of a young Palestinian girl trying to escape a school shelter that had been set on fire after a deadly overnight Israeli airstrike circulated widely on social media Monday. The five-year-old girl survived the attack after being rescued by emergency crews, but six of her family members were killed and two remain in critical condition.
In the video, the silhouette of a child is seen trudging through rubble at Fahmi Al-Jarjawi School in Gaza City, which had been set ablaze in the early morning hours Monday.
"I was scared of the fire," Ward Al-Sheikh Khalil told CBC News on Monday, after she was rescued and treated in hospital. "The whole school was burning up."
Her five siblings — between the ages of two and 18 — along with their mother, were all killed in the Israeli airstrike on the school shelter, where they had been sleeping at the time. Ward's father and brother, meanwhile, remain in critical condition in hospital.
Hussein Mohsen, a paramedic in Gaza, said rescue crews including medical workers and Palestinian Civil Defence volunteers, had difficulty entering the shelter after the strike at around 2 a.m. local time — but as soon as they gained access, they swiftly began searching for survivors under the rubble.
"The [rubble] was scorching hot, and she was underneath," Mohsen said. "She wasn't talking or screaming. We just noticed her foot that was moving; nothing else was moving."
Mohsen, along with Ward and her uncle Ayad Al-Sheikh Khalil, confirmed that Ward is the child in the video. Mohsen said Ward was likely trapped anywhere between 15 to 30 minutes before rescuers were able to pull her out of the rubble and rush her to hospital.
Ayad Al-Sheikh Khalil said he was alerted to the attack on the school before recognizing Ward in the video circulating online of her walking through the fiery scene before being rescued by emergency crews.
"When I arrived, I found my brother's family's bodies all charred and cut up," he said, as he held Ward in his arms.
Not enough body bags
Mohsen said rescuers were using their bare hands to search through the wreckage, with little to no equipment available to them in Gaza to help rescue survivors and remove bodies.
While he was relieved he was able to rescue Ward, Mohsen said emergency crews witnessed dozens of bodies, overwhelmingly of children, which were burned and lay at the site of the strike.
"I was placing three bodies of children in one body bag because of the shortage of body bags on hand," he said.
"I would place two or four [bodies], or I would place a mother and her children in one body bag."
Health officials said 36 people were killed in the airstrike on the school, including women and children who had been displaced by the 20-month war and were seeking shelter inside.
Images shared widely on social media showed what appeared to be badly burned bodies being pulled from the rubble.
'Our hearts have died,' woman says
Farah Nussair said the school was sheltering "civilians, children, elderly, women, and men — just the tired ones who needed food and water." She added, "Our hearts have died," describing scenes of charred people and body parts.
"We fled to the south, they bombed us in the south. We returned to the north, they bombed us in the north," Nussair told Reuters, with a child in her lap.
"There is no security or safety, neither at schools nor hospitals — not anywhere," she added.
Israel's military confirmed that it had targeted the school. It said that the building was being used as a centre by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants to plan and organize attacks.
It said numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.
The military did not provide evidence that the school was being used by militants. On Monday, Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said Hamas had lost many assets including its command and control infrastructure.
A separate strike on a home in Jabalia in northern Gaza killed 16 members of the same family, including five women and two children, according to Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies.
Palestinian militants meanwhile fired three projectiles from Gaza, two of which fell short within the territory and a third that was intercepted, according to the Israeli military.
Aid foundation director resigns
Israel says a new system is needed to separate aid from Hamas, which it accuses of stealing and using food to impose control over the population. The charge is rejected by Hamas, which says it protects aid convoys from gangs of armed looters.
But the executive director of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for the past two months quit unexpectedly on Sunday, a day before the group was due to begin operations.
Jake Wood said he resigned because the group could not adhere "to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence."
His departure underscores the confusion surrounding the foundation, which has been boycotted by the United Nations and the aid groups supplying aid to Gaza before Israel imposed a total blockade on the enclave in March.
Israel, which floated a similar plan earlier this year, says it will not be involved in distributing aid but it had endorsed the plan and would provide security for it.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which would use private contractors working under a broad Israeli security umbrella, said it would begin deliveries on Monday, with the aim of reaching one million Palestinians by the end of the week.
"We plan to scale [up] rapidly to serve the full population in the weeks ahead," it said in a statement.
Israel's war in Gaza has squeezed the population into an ever-narrowing zone in coastal areas and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
The Israeli campaign, triggered after Hamas-led Islamist militants stormed Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, has devastated Gaza and pushed nearly all of its residents from their homes.
The offensive has killed more than 53,000 people in Gaza, many of them civilians, according to its health authorities.
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With files from CBC's Mohamed El Saife, Reuters and The Associated Press