'Bodies Everywhere' Horror Of The Strike On Rafah Camp

It took nearly half an hour for the first ambulances and firefighters to reach the stretch of blazing tents in the Kuwait peace camp in Rafah on Sunday night.

- Malak A Tantesh, Emma Graham-Harrison

The crowding and rubble that slowed the passage of emergency vehicles fuelled the spread of flames through the temporary homes of the displaced.

Zuhair, a 36-year-old lawyer, had been sitting on a road near his own tent watching the news with friends as the twilight faded from the sky, when an explosion shook the area at about 8.45pm. He raced towards the sound, terrified for his wife, children and friends.

"I saw bodies everywhere. Children burning. I saw heads without bodies, the injured running around in pain, some alive but trapped inside burning tents."

There had been no warning, and for many long minutes, there was no help. At first, he said, people tried to drag the injured from tents with their bare hands, loading them on to donkey carts or cramming them into cars to seek help.

Sharif Warsh Agha, a driver, was among the crowds trying to help. He stepped around bodies burned and mutilated by the explosion and the fires that followed.

"I heard a woman screaming for help for her sister. When I went into the tent, I found her seriously injured in the foot and her mother lying dead next to her," he said.

He did basic first aid, got her to the car, then someone called to say his young nephew had lost his feet.

"I turned the car around to get my injured nephew but when we started moving someone was brought to me with an open chest wound. We put him in too," he said. Nine people were loaded into the small car, with some in the boot.

Agha had been with his family in their tent resting after the Maghrib twilight prayer when a red flash and an explosion ripped the night apart.

Black smoke and a deadly hail of shrapnel followed, then the sound of screaming.