The evacuation warning came shortly after dark. The Israeli military fired the shot just a short distance from Nasser Abu Quta's home in the southern Gaza Strip, a precautionary measure meant to allow people to evacuate before airstrikes. Abu Quta, 57, thought he and his extended family would be safe some hundred yards away from the house that was alerted to the pending strike. He huddled with his relatives on the ground floor of his four-story building, bracing for an impact in the area. But the house of Abu Quta's neighbor was never hit. In an instant, an explosion ripped through his own home, wiping out 19 members of his family, including his wife and cousins, he said. The airstrike also killed five of his neighbors who were standing outside in the jam-packed refugee camp, a jumble of buildings and alleyways, the AP reports.
The airstrike in Rafah, a southern town on the border with Egypt, came as Israeli forces intensified their bombardment of targets in the Gaza Strip following the surprise Saturday attack by militant group Hamas. The Israeli military said late Saturday that it had struck various Hamas offices and command centers in multi-story buildings. But Abu Quta doesn't understand why Israel struck his house. There were no militants in his building, he insisted, and his family was not warned. They would not have stayed in their house if they were, added his relative, Khalid. "This is a safe house, with children and women," Abu Quta, still shell-shocked, said as he recalled the tragedy in fragments of detail. "Dust overwhelmed the house. There were screams," he said. "There were no walls. It was all open."
Human rights groups have previously said that Israel's pattern of deadly attacks on residential homes display a disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians and argued they may amount to war crimes. In past wars and rounds of fighting between Israel and Hamas militants, individual Israeli airstrikes have killed great numbers of civilians—for instance, 22 members of the same family in a single strike in a bloody 2021 war. Abu Quta was gripped by grief Sunday as he prepared for the rush of burials with his two dozen other surviving relatives, including wounded children and grandchildren. While he managed to identify the charred and mangled bodies of 14 family members, at least four children's bodies remained in the morgue, unrecognizable. One body was missing. "Maybe we'll put them tomorrow in a single grave," he said. "May they rest in peace."
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