'I saw a toddler's body without a head... this was a massacre': Rescuers describe collecting body parts in horrific aftermath of Gaza hospital blast with carnage leaving 'smell of the dead everywhere'

PUBLISHEDWed Oct 18 2023 08:55 GMT

UPDATEDWed Oct 18 2023 13:56 GMT

Witness testimony from the devastating blast at a Gaza Strip hospital last night lays bare the horrors of its aftermath, with doctors and rescue workers saying they saw children who had lost their heads and limbs in what they called a 'massacre'.

Hundreds were killed when a massive fireball, described as being like 'hell', ripped through the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City at 7pm on Tuesday night, leaving carnage in its wake.

Horrifying video shows the utter devastation wrought on the health centre, with blood-soaked sheets covering the sea of victims of a violent explosion as witnesses say the 'smell of bodies' now hangs in the air.

Heavily muzzed video has now emerged which shows corpses piling up outside the hospital, with some barely covered in the darkness as war-torn Gaza runs out of body bags.

MailOnline is choosing to publish the graphic images, also shared by the BBC and other outlets, to show the scale of the destruction at the hospital, where Palestine claims at least 500 were killed last night.

'This is a massacre,' Ahmed Tafesh, who assisted in the recovery effort, said. In his harrowing account of the aftermath, he said he had collected the eyes, arms, legs and heads of the deceased. 'I have never seen anything like this in my life.'

The source of the explosion remains aggressively disputed, with a blame game erupting between Hamas and Israel as the terrorists claim it was the result of an Israeli air strike while the IDF blames Islamic Jihad militants for a misfired rocket.

***WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT ***

Heavily muzzed video has now emerged which shows corpses piling up outside the hospital

An injured Palestinian is carried away from Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital after it was hit in Gaza City

Pictured: The burning hospital building after the strike on Tuesday night

Blood-soaked sheets are covering the victims of a violent explosion overnight

Devastated family members are now coping with the unspeakable loss of their relatives in the hospital blast

The wrapped bodies of victims who died in an overnight blast are being taken away on the back of trucks

Stunned crowds have been gathering around to bear witness to the unconscionable destruction of the health facility

People gather to mourn the scores of victims in the hospital attack last night

Children sit in the back of an ambulance at Shifa Hospital after a huge explosion, which Palestine blames on Israeli air strikes, ripped through the facility

A woman reacts while holding a pillow as she stands amidst debris outside the site of the Ahli Arab hospital

Today, devastated and shell-shocked relatives have been forced to comb through the piles of bodies to try and identify their loved ones, and traumatised health workers have had no choice but to continue treating the patients left behind.

While doctors were treating patients who thought they were safe from Israeli air strikes in the hospital, a huge explosion brought havoc to a place meant to heal the sick.

'People came running into the surgery department screaming, 'Help us, help us, there are people killed and wounded inside the hospital!'' said Dr Fadel Naim, Head of the hospital's Orthopedic Surgery Department, who he had just finished an operation and was about to start another when the explosion hit.

'The hospital was full of dead and wounded, dismembered bodies, and dead,' he said.

'We tried to save whoever can be saved but the number was too big for the hospital team to be able to save... We saw them alive but we couldn't help them and they were martyred.'

As well as killing hundreds, many more had existing injuries worsened by the blast, while the already-stretched hospital is now flooded with new patients wounded in its wake.

Wounded Palestinians wait for treatment in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, central Gaza Strip, after arriving from al-Ahli hospital following an explosion there on Tuesday

Wounded Palestinian children lay at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday

People react at the area of Al-Ahli hospital, where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other, in Gaza City, October 18, 2023

Israel denied responsibility for the blast at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday, claiming it was a rocket misfired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists

Palestinian paramedic carries a child injured in an air strike at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern of Gaza Strip on Tuesday

Crying and injured Palestinians were taken to Al-Shifa Hospital following blast at Al'Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza

An injured boy was taken carried to doctors after a blast at a hospital in Gaza

Among the many killed and injured were Palestinian children

People gather around bodies of Palestinians killed in blast at the Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza after they were transported to Al-Shifa hospital

'They are all in a terrible situation,' Mohammed Abu Selmia said.

'A young woman whose limbs were amputated, a child whose intestines came out, many others have had limb amputations, bleeding in the brain, bleeding in the liver and spleen.'

Ghassan Abu Sitteh, a British-Palestinian doctor with the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), was treating patients when the explosion hit.

'We were operating in the hospital. There was a strong explosion and the ceiling fell on the operating room,' he said.

'Hospitals are not a target... This bloodshed must stop. Enough is enough.'

In a chilling account of the aftermath of the attack, Dr Abu Sitteh, also said in a post on Facebook: 'We now know that the number of killed exceeds 500. This number will increase as I saw many dismembered bodies and parts of bodies as I carried the last patient into the ambulance past the courtyard,' he said.

'The number of children who were killed exceeds 50 per cent. I saw a body of a toddler who was missing a head.

'The remaining patients who were at Ahli (Baptist Hospital) Hospital were moved to Shifa Hospital. Shifa has now run out of external fixators needed to stabilise fractures.'

He laid the blame for the attack squarely at Israel's door, calling it 'a massacre by appointment.'

'The Israeli government has been openly saying it was going to target hospitals for the last week and the world just stood by and did nothing,' he said.

Meanwhile, other medics and local people have been pictured scouring the area around the hospital for yet more bodies, with the death toll potentially rising further.

A Palestinian man carries an elderly woman past the site of a deadly explosion at al-Ahli hospital

Bodies of those killed in the hospital blast are piling up in Gaza

A family's belongings strewn across the floor outside the hospital in the aftermath of the explosion

Civilians collect belongings amid wreckage of vehicles after Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital was hit

The shell of a burnt out car and heavy damage to buildings could be seen in pictures following the blast

Children collect pillows and other belongings from the wreckage of vehicles outside the facility

People standing next to the bodies of those killed in a blast at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza

'There are corpses in the streets. Buildings are crashing down on their inhabitants,' said Jamil Abdullah, a Palestinian-Swede, hoping to flee the blockaded enclave.

'The smell of the dead is everywhere.'