The truck kicked up dust and small rocks as it trundled into the refugee camp. Behind it, a convoy of tanks drove carefully. They were entering the central market of Nuseirat, in the Gaza Strip, which was heaving with residents and refugees doing their Saturday-morning shopping before the midday heat.
The tanks pulled up outside the stalls and parked. Soldiers rushed towards the concrete housing blocks where diamonds — the codename for the Israeli hostages — were being kept. The quiet may have held for a long moment.
“A truck similar to the one carrying goods stopped and behind it was another car. A person wearing a mask got out. We looked at each other and felt that the situation was not good. It was only a matter of minutes until the bombing started in an insane and intense manner,” said Maddah Adwan, a resident of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza who was at the market when the raid began just after 11am.
Adwan said: “We could no longer see anything from the density of smoke and shrapnel and the continuous bombing, from the force of the bombing and continuous strikes. I wasn’t aware but my body rushed forward several metres. I injured my hand when I entered Abu Wael’s small grocery store.
“Then, the special forces entered Abu Wael’s house, which was located on the top floor of his store. I heard screaming and gunfire and saw soldiers entering his house.”
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The mammoth rescue mission to retrieve four hostages, Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41, was accompanied by heavy ground, air and naval assaults. According to a statement from the hospitals who received the dead and injured, more than 200 Gazans were killed in the operation. On Sunday, a higher death toll of 274 was given by the Hamas media office, which also said that more than 698 people were wounded. Residents of the camp said they were still retrieving people from the wreckage. Videos from the aftermath showed people splayed on the ground, a grey vision spattered with red bloodstains.
Noura Abu Khamis, 30, was displaced from northern Gaza. She and her son were sheltering in a tent near the sea, west of Nuseirat, when helicopters flew overhead. Within minutes, her 12-year-old son, Ahmed, was on the ground, critically wounded.
Khamis said that at “eleven o’clock, the bombing began from every direction, and drones were launching towards anyone that moved. Suddenly we found that rounds of fire, missiles and a lot of bullets were being fired at us.”
The Israeli army said it came under heavy fire during the operation. Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the military, said that the mission was “impossible to happen without going through the civilians of Gaza”.
Hagari confirmed on Saturday in a briefing to journalists that dozens of Palestinians had been killed, reporting the number to be “under 100” casualties. He could not say how many were civilians.
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On Sunday, the Hamas-run health ministry said that the casualties included at least 64 children, 57 women, and 37 elderly people.
• Israeli hostages rescued by IDF from Gaza refugee camp
Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, said Hamas was to blame for putting civilians in the crossfire. He said: “The Palestinian people are going through sheer hell in this conflict because Hamas is operating in a way that puts them in the crossfire, that holds hostages right in the heart of crowded civilian areas, that puts military emplacements right in the heart of crowded civilian areas.”
Ahmed Abu Khamis is still in critical condition. His mother fears that “no one can save him” due to a lack of medical supplies and overcrowded hospitals.
The injured were taken to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where Mohammed Hammad, a camp resident, awoke in the aftermath of the strikes to doctors saying that he may lose a foot. “I was standing in front of my house and I don’t know what happened. Suddenly, I could not feel my body. I did not know if it was a missile or a shell. I was taken to the hospital,” Hammad said.
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“When I arrived at Al-Aqsa hospital I saw the horror of dismembered bodies, screaming children, body parts and blood everywhere. My injury was nothing in the face of these other injuries, even knowing that my injury was in my foot and it might have to be amputated.”
As Argamani crawled into the helicopter with three Israeli special operatives and it took off over the Mediterranean for Tel Aviv, Abu Khamis was on the beach nearby, reeling from her son’s wounds. “I collected up my son’s crumbled body piece by piece, putting them in my lap,” she said. “My son is gone, my love is gone, my son is gone, my beloved is gone. There is no one else.”
