Under the cover of darkness, the Israeli military started raining down bombs on al-Mawasi, which produced massive craters and left at least 40 people, most of them women and children, dead on impact.
Eyewitnesses told the media that the explosions were so large that they felt like an "earthquake that rocked the area." After stepping outside to see what had happened, these same eyewitnesses saw numerous victims "with amputated limbs" strewn throughout the streets.
"It was around 12:30 am or 1 am, I was sleeping in the pergola outside my house when suddenly I saw missiles falling and sand raining down on us," one eyewitness named Alaa Shahda Mahmoud al-Shaer said. "They bombed the area with about four or five missiles.
Shaer's sisters, in-laws and daughters were all with him at the time when the attack occurred. They were there because Israel had previously told them that al-Mawasi was a humanitarian zone where they would be safe from bombs – but just like all the other times Israel said this, it turned out to be a lie.
"Only God knows how we saved people," Shaer continued in an interview. "We removed the sand and tents off them with our bare hands. It was a struggle to pull out the victims. We tried to rescue the women and children but the sand had covered the tents and people."
"Some tents, we couldn't even find them – they were completely buried. The civil defense tried to retrieve them during the night but couldn't, and we are still waiting for them to be recovered."
(Related: Did you know that many more Christians have been martyred throughout history than Jews at Nazi concentration camps? And yet we never hear about it in the history books – why is that?)
Israel gave no evacuation orders before bombing al-Mawasi
Israel's defenders often claim that these kinds of attacks are a necessary part of the war because Hamas militants allegedly hide in civilian areas. As such, Israel has been known to bomb residential areas and leave behind mountains of civilian bodies, which they claim is simply part of how Israel is eradicating Hamas.
Another common claim is that Israel uses such "precision" in its attacks that only the targets end up being killed. And if that is still not enough, Israel insists that it is doing everything it can to protect civilians from becoming collateral damage, which is clearly not the case.
Not only was al-Mawasi a designated humanitarian zone where Israel told the Palestinian people to go for protection, only to bomb them later, but Israel also provided no advance warning about the attack so civilians could vacate the premises to avoid death.
"I didn't see the martyrs, but the young men said there was a woman with her head cut off, children and members of the al-Shaer and Foujo families killed," Shaer explained. "Everyone who died were ordinary people. We never heard that any of them worked with the resistance before."
According to IDF, the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone where it told the people of Gaza to flee for refuge was actually a Hamas command center "disguised in the humanitarian area in Khan Younis," and that "many steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians, including the use of precision weaponry, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence information."
As usual, Israel provided no evidence to back these claims – we are simply supposed to believe it because to not believe it is to not support Israel, which some say is a form of "antisemitism."
The latest news about the situation on the ground in the Middle East can be found at WWIII.news.
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.
