The Israeli military has launched a series of deadly strikes in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, including on a flour distribution center, a school and a hospital where displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
Video of a fire at a tent camp that started after Israeli forces launched an airstrike on Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah overnight showed harrowing scenes.
In multiple videos shared on social media and verified by NBC News, at least one person could be seen reaching their hands out from the flames as they were burned alive. Others could be seen racing from the fire, some carrying the injured, while others ran toward the blaze to help.
At least four people were killed in the strike and its fiery aftermath, with dozens more injured, including women and children, local health officials said.
The Israel Defense Forces said it was targeting Hamas militants operating out of the hospital.
On Friday, a fact-finding mission set up by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate war crimes in occupied Palestinian territories and Israel said the Israeli military’s targeting of hospitals in Gaza constituted “the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination.”
Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry dismissed the accusations from the commission as “outrageous.”
The Israeli military again faced condemnation from U.N. leaders Monday after troops struck a school in Nuseirat in central Gaza. The strike hit a refugee camp run by the U.N. agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, killing at least 20 people, the agency’s commissioner general said.
The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News on Monday.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said the Mufti school was meant to be used in the second round of polio vaccinations in the Gaza Strip, which began Monday.
“We had to cancel the vaccination campaign in that school due to severe damage,” he said in a post on X on Monday morning.
The strikes marked a deadly weekend in Gaza that persisted into Monday morning, with the Israeli military launching a separate strike in the area of the Jabalia refugee camp in the north, killing several people and injuring dozens of others, an official at the Al-Awda Hospital told NBC News. The official said the strike had hit a flour distribution center.
NBC News was not immediately able to independently verify the details of the strike.
The IDF said Monday in a separate statement posted on Telegram that its forces were continuing operational activity throughout the Gaza Strip.
In another statement, it said Hamas was attempting to regroup and rebuild its forces in Jabalia and accused the militant group of “actively preventing Gazan civilians” from the leaving the area. NBC News was not able to independently verify the claim.
More than 42,200 people have been killed in Gaza, according to local health officials, since Israel launched its military offensive in the enclave following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks, in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others taken hostage, according to Israeli officials. With thousands still missing or buried under the rubble, the death toll in Gaza is expected to be higher than official numbers.
Israel has continued its ramped-up offensive in Lebanon, where the death toll is also rising.
Lazzarini urged the international community not to let the weekend violence in Gaza “become the new norm.”
“Gaza is a never-ending hell,” he said, noting both the school and hospital strikes.
“Humanity must prevail.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
