A bearded man in a red-and-white-striped top stands up, eyes wide and arms flung out, and howls.
Scattered around him lie the devastated bodies of people buried in piles of rubble. Ash falls as rescuers search for survivors trapped in the wreckage carrying small children, some limp, some struggling, some dead.
The man in the red-and-white top puts his left arm around an adolescent girl, her hair and blue pajamas coated in dust. Behind them fire burns bright. Seconds later he embraces a young woman in a printed headscarf as she wails and thrashes about in distress.
An NBC News crew in the Gaza Strip caught these and other images in the immediate aftermath of an overnight airstrike on the United Nations-run Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz school-turned-shelter, which killed 13 people, according to The Associated Press, citing Nasser Hospital, where the bodies were taken.
The crew also captured the moment Shadi Tafesh arrived to find 10 members of his family lying together, lifeless and in pieces. His father's head was severed from his body. His sister, her husband and their two children were dismembered.
On Monday morning, just hours after the attack, dozens gathered to mourn, standing by friends and relatives now wrapped in body bags.
The Israel Defense Forces said it had “conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating inside a command and control center embedded within a compound” that it said had served as the UNRWA Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz school.
It did not provide evidence of the claim that militants were operating in the building.
"Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, precise aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence," the IDF added.
In a statement released Monday morning, Hamas called the attack a "heinous massacre" and accused Israel of the "systematic targeting of schools and centers for the displaced."
The strike was the fourth in a series of Israeli attacks over the weekend on Gaza schools serving as shelters for displaced Palestinians, which helped push the death toll in Gaza beyond 45,000, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials. Over 106,000 people have been injured, and many remain buried under the rubble, officials said.
On Saturday morning, two people were killed in a raid on a Yaffa school, northeast of Gaza City, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
Hours later, Israeli airstrikes killed seven people during an attack on the Al-Majida Wasila school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, local health officials said.
Women and children were among the dead, including a baby girl named Janan Al-Ghura, who was born on Friday and killed on Saturday alongside her mother, Suzan.
An NBC News crew captured the moment a member of the civil defense emerged carrying the body of a small child, covered in dust, mud and blood, through the building.
Nargis Al-Ghura said she had lost her daughter, son and granddaughter in the attack.
“To whom do I complain, oh Lord, of my pain and sorrow?” she cried. Nargis said she had already lost her husband to the war.
The IDF said that Hamas was operating "command and control" centers inside the Yaffa and Al-Majida Wasila schools and that "numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians."
On Sunday, Israeli strikes on Khalil Awida, another school-turned-shelter in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza that houses more than 1,500 displaced people, killed more than 40, according to health officials, with fires charring a number of bodies.
Hamas accused Israel of a massacre "against the displaced people" at the shelter and of carrying out "ethnic cleansing and forced displacement operations" in the northern Gaza Strip.
The IDF did not respond to a request for comment on the strike on Khalil Awida.
The Israeli military has been operating in Gaza for 15 months, a response to the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in which roughly 1,200 people were killed in Israel and around 250 people were taken hostage.
