This is the moment a BBC journalist broke down in tears while reporting from inside a hospital in Gaza.
BBC Arabic reporter Adnan El-Bursh fell to his knees after seeing dozens of friends and neighbours among the dead as Israel bombards the settlement in retaliation for a deadly Hamas rampage.
He described the situation in Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in the 25-mile strip, as traumatic with ‘bodies everywhere’. In one segment, a young girl with a bloodied face sits upright in a hospital bed, crying and covered in dust as a doctor tends to her legs. El-Bursh reveals she has lost her home and her relatives have been killed.
Speaking to camera at the end of his report, El-Bursh admits: ‘I have seen things I can never unsee.
BBC Arabic reporter Adnan El-Bursh reported the desperate plight of civilians as Israel bombarded Gaza for a sixth consecutive night
Mr El-Bursh wept after seeing the situation in Al-Shifa Hospital
His cameraman Mahmoud also wept after seeing his friend Malik lying wounded
‘Here in Al-Shifa Hospital, bodies lay everywhere. The injured scream for help, you can never forget these sounds. Among the dead and wounded, my cameraman Mahmoud has seen his friend Malik.
‘Malik has managed to survive but his family have not.
‘This is my local hospital. Inside are my friends, my neighbours, this is my community. Today has been one of the most difficult days of my career.
‘I have seen things I can never unsee.’
Israel has been bombarding Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas rampage in southern Israeli towns that killed at least 1,300 people this week.
But at least 1,500 Palestinians have been killed in the bombing campaigns, and Israel has also traded barbs with Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.
Human Rights Watch said it verified videos taken in Lebanon on October 10 and Gaza on October 11 showing ‘multiple airbursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border’.
White phosphorus munitions can legally be used on battlefields to make smoke screens, generate illumination, mark targets or burn bunkers and buildings.
Because it has legal uses, white phosphorus is not banned as a chemical weapon under international conventions – but it can cause serious burns and start fires.
White phosphorous is considered an incendiary weapon under Protocol III of the Convention on the Prohibition of Use of Certain Conventional Weapons, which prohibits using incendiary weapons against military targets located among civilians, although Israel has not signed it and is not bound by it.
‘White phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause egregious harm to civilians,’ Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
Human Rights Watch on Thursday accused Israel of using white phosphorus munitions in its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon
Human Rights Watch said it verified videos taken in Lebanon on Oct. 10 and Gaza on Oct. 11 showing ‘multiple airbursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border’
White phosphorus munitions can legally be used on battlefields to make smoke screens, generate illumination, mark targets or burn bunkers and buildings – but they can cause serious burns and fires, with weaponised white phosphorus having a devastating effect
Israeli occupation aircraft launch white phosphorus bombs west of Gaza City on October 11, 2023 in Gaza City, Gaza
A fireball erupts from an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on October 12
Israeli tanks move near Gaza border as Israeli army deploys military vehicles around the Gaza Strip, Israel on October 12, 2023
Israeli artillery fire rounds into the Gaza Strip from the border on October 12, 2023
Asked for comment on the allegations, Israel’s military said it was ‘currently not aware of the use of weapons containing white phosphorous in Gaza.’
It did not provide comment on the rights watchdog’s allegations of their use in Lebanon.
Palestinian TV channels have broadcast video in recent days showing thin plumes of white smoke lining the sky over Gaza that they say was caused by such munitions.
Israel’s military in 2013 said it was phasing out white phosphorus smokescreen munitions used during its 2008-2009 offensive in Gaza, which drew war crimes allegations from various rights groups.
The military at the time did not say whether it would also review use of weaponised white phosphorus, which is designed to incinerate enemy positions.
This morning, Israel’s Defence Force issued an evacuation order to some 1.1 million people living in the Gaza Strip, giving them 24 hours to leave their homes ahead of what is presumed to be a ramping up of airstrikes, or a ground assault.
But Hamas has called on Palestinians to stay in their homes.
The Hamas Authority for Refugee Affairs called on residents of the north of the territory to ‘remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm in the face of this disgusting psychological war waged by the occupation’.
Palestinians would only be able to flee south within Gaza as Israel has completely sealed off the territory, a narrow strip of land about 25 miles long.
The Israeli military had said it would operate with ‘significant force’ in Gaza in the coming days and is calling on civilians to evacuate.
Spokesman Jonathan Conricus said Israeli forces ‘will make extensive efforts to avoid harming civilians’.
He added: ‘Out of an understanding that there are civilians here who are not our enemy and we do not want to target them, we are asking them to evacuate.’
Suffering in Gaza has risen with Palestinians desperate for food, fuel and medicine, while the territory’s only power plant shut down for lack of fuel. A mortuary is said to have overflowed as bodies came in faster than relatives could claim them.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin is set to visit on Friday, a day after American secretary of state Antony Blinken was in Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The war has claimed at least 2,800 lives on both sides since Hamas launched an incursion on October 7.
Inas Hamdan, an officer at the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza City, said: ‘This is chaos, no-one understands what to do.’
She said all the UN staff in Gaza City and northern Gaza had been told to evacuate south to Rafah.
Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza City, claimed there was no way more than one million people could be safely moved within the timeframe specified, saying: ‘Forget about food, forget about electricity, forget about fuel. The only concern now is just if … you’re going to live.’
She added: ‘What will happen to our patients?
‘We have wounded, we have elderly, we have children who are in hospitals.’
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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