Shaban al-Dalu was sleeping in his tent in a central Gaza hospital's courtyard, still recuperating from wounds from an Israeli strike on a mosque a week earlier, when a new strike hit, setting off an inferno.
The 19-year-old university student and his 38-year-old mother, Alaa al-Dalu, were among five people killed as the blaze ripped through a tent camp sheltering hundreds of Palestinian families in the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah. Dozens of others, including children, were severely burned.
Al-Dalu and his mother were sleeping in the tent along with his father and three siblings when the strike hit at around 1:30 a.m. on Monday. Mohammed al-Dalu, his fifth sibling, was sleeping nearby at his vendor's table when the explosion jolted him awake. He found his father and uncle, who lived in a neighboring tent, struggling to pull their families out of the fire
The father, Ahmed al-Dalu, said he managed to rescue two of his sons and his daughter, but not his wife or eldest child, Shaban. “My son was being burned in front of me,” he said, speaking at the hospital with burns on his face. “I accepted the will of God in every sense of the word.”
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The Israeli military said it targeted militants hiding out among the displaced, without providing evidence to support its claim. It was the 7th Israeli attack on this hospital compound since March; three of them occurred in September, according to Doctors without Borders, which supports the hospital.
The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 hostages. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. It has displaced more than 1.9 million of Gaza's 2.3 million people.
Over the course of the war, the military has repeatedly raided hospitals and struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks, without showing evidence.
Monday's strike brought chaos at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, as firefighters and displaced people attempted for hours to put out the blaze, using small fire extinguishers and buckets of water. Several secondary explosions went off, but their cause was not known. The courtyard was left covered in burned-out wreckage of shed and tents, made of wood and plastic sheets, with people's belongings inside.
“It’s a scene of devastation. Tents caught on fire while people were sleeping,” said Eliza Sabatini, a nurse with Doctors Without Borders who was working at the hospital.
More than 60 people, including 10 children and 8 women, were wounded, most suffering severe burns. One man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, where many wounded were rushed.
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Shaban al-Dalu, who would have turned 20 on Wednesday, memorized the Quran when he was young and cared for his siblings.
A university student studying computer science, he would post videos on social media telling people his family’s displacement stories and his dream of leaving Gaza. In a video posted in March, filmed from their tent in the hospital's courtyard, he said his family fled their home in Gaza City's Rimal neighborhood just after the war began in October last year. Since then, he said, they had moved five times to escape fighting.
“We live in a very hard circumstance,” he said in the video. He launched an online fundraiser hoping to make enough money to get his family to Egypt. By Wednesday, it had raised more than $24,200 — though no one has been been able to leave Gaza since Israeli troops seized the crossing with Egypt in May.
“I used to have big dreams, but the war has ruined them,” he wrote on his GoFundMe page. “Time feels like it’s stopped in Gaza, and we’re stuck in a never-ending nightmare.”
On Oct. 6, he was reciting the Quran in a mosque near the hospital when an Israeli airstrike hit the place of worship, his brother Mohammed said. Shaban suffered a head wound that required 11 stitches and was still recuperating in the tent when Monday's strike hit.
Shaban's father and the three siblings in the tent have all been left severely burned, some up to 70% of their body, Mohammed said. The body of his 11-year-old brother Adbel-Rahman is completely covered in bandages, and his sister's back and the left side of her face were badly burned, he said.
Shaban's uncle, Abdel-Hayy al-Dalu, recalled how the families had thought they were safe when they arrived at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
“We built tents - me and my brother - and sheltered here,” he said. “We ruled out that it will be bombed since it’s a hospital.”
After rescuing his wife and two daughters, Abdel-Hayy rushed to his brother’s tent, hoping to save his nephew and sister-in-law.
“We couldn’t help them,” he said. “We were helpless.”