Charred bodies and screams: Witnesses describe scenes of horror at Rafah camp

Multiple videos from the same location, verified by The New York Times, show fires raging through the night as people frantically pull bodies from the rubble and shout in horror as they carry away charred remains.

By morning, several shed-like structures were flattened, and cars were burnt out, the footage shows. The sheds are part of a displaced persons camp known as the Kuwaiti al-Salam Camp 1.

The Times verified that the locations seen in various videos showing fires raging and burnt bodies were from the same camp, by comparing them to previous videos of the site from aid groups. In a statement on Instagram, one of the groups that supports the camp, Al-Salam Association for Humanitarian and Charitable Works, said that, besides dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries, more than 120 tents and dozens of toilets were burnt and damaged, and that a water well was destroyed.

Adli Abu Taha, 33, a freelance journalist who was at a nearby field hospital run by the United Arab Emirates Red Crescent, said the dead and wounded began arriving there shortly after he heard two loud explosions.

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“Several injured arrived without one or more limbs and were severely burned,” Abu Taha said. “The hospital soon became overwhelmed,” he added.

When Abu Taha went to the tent camp in the morning, all he could see was “destruction” coupled with “the smell of smoke and burnt flesh,” he said. He said that some families were dismantling their tents and preparing to find another place to seek shelter.

Dr Marwan al-Hams, who was at the Tal al-Sultan Health Centre in Rafah where many of the casualties first arrived before being transferred to nearby field hospitals, said that of the killed and wounded he saw, a majority were women and children.

“Many of the dead bodies were severely burnt, had amputated limbs and were torn to pieces,” he said.

Mohammed Abu Ghanem, 26, said that he and the 13 other people who had been sheltering in a tent with him in the camp were wondering where to go. “I hear that everywhere is being bombed and I have no cash to pay for the trucks that evacuate people,” he said, adding: “We have no other option but to remain here and wait for death.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.