The Jabaliya neighborhood north of Gaza City was pummeled with Israeli airstrikes for a third consecutive day on Thursday, while doctors treating the victims described nightmarish scenes of operating without basic supplies or anesthesia.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safyia, director of the pediatric ward at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where many of the casualties from the Jabaliya strikes were taken, said the majority of the people arriving were children. Many were severely burned or were missing limbs.
On Tuesday, after the first strike in Jabaliya, the hospital received about 40 people who did not survive, and 250 others who were wounded, he said. The numbers were nearly the same on Wednesday, when another strike hit. On Thursday, a strike damaged a United Nations school being used as a shelter and sent in another wave of patients: 10 dead and 80 others wounded.
“I’ve never in my life seen injuries this bad,” Dr. Abu Safyia said on Thursday by phone, adding, “We saw children without heads.”
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which runs the school, said that the school had been among four of its shelters — housing nearly 20,000 people total — that had been damaged in the previous 24 hours. Twenty people were reported to have been killed at the Jabaliya shelter, the agency said, along with three people in other strikes at the Shati and Bureij camps.