Warning: Contains images of death.
The Palestinian photographed while burning alive in a Gaza City tent encampment bombed by Israeli forces on Monday has been identified.
Sha'ban al-Dalou, was a highly promising 19-year-old software engineering student at Gaza's al-Azhar University, which was destroyed by an Israeli bombing last November, two months after he began studying there. Al-Dalou, his parents, and siblings sought shelter in the courtyard of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza after being forcibly displaced multiple times by Israel's onslaught, for which the U.S.-backed nation is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
"In this barbaric starvation war, we have [been] displaced five times so far," al-Dalou said in an undated video shared on social media.
"I'm taking care of my family, as I am the oldest," the teen explains as an Israeli drone can be heard hovering nearby. "I have two sisters and two little brothers and my parents. We left in... very hard circumstances, suffering... homelessness, limited food, and extremely limited medicine, and the only things between us and the freezing condition is this tent that we constructed by ourselves."
The teen was reportedly receiving treatment at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital after surviving an Israeli strike on a Deir al-Balah mosque that killed more than 20 people earlier this month.
"Yesterday they bombed in front of al-Aqsa Hospital and I was there sleeping," al-Dalou wrote to his brother after the attack, according toThe Siasat Daily, a major Indian newspaper. "I saw death in my eyes. They took me out of the rubble; I was unconscious, bleeding, injured—all like a dream."
"I'm injured in my head; I got 11 stitches behind my ear," he added. "If it was stronger, I'd be dead by now. I've also got an injury in my lung... it really hurts so much."
Al-Dalou, his mother, and at least two other people were killed early on Monday when Israel bombed the hospital's courtyard as they slept, sparking an inferno that tore through the tent encampment there. Video and photos showed al-Dalou burning alive, screaming for help, with an intravenous drip still attached to his arm.
In March, al-Dalou wrote:
I used to have big dreams, but the war has ruined them. It's taken a toll on me, making me physically and mentally sick. I suffer from depression and hair loss because of the constant trauma we face. Time feels like its stopped in Gaza, and we're stuck in a never-ending nightmare.
Responding to the grisly images of al-Dalou's death, Waleed Shahid, a U.S. progressive strategist who worked for lawmakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), said on social media that "the image of hospital patients, tethered to IVs as American-supplied Israeli bombs ignite fires around them in Gaza, may well stand as the defining image of this horror," much as the photo of so-called "Napalm Girl" Phan Thị Kim Phúc does for the Vietnam War.
Al-Dalou, his mother Alaa al-Dalou, and the other victims of Monday's bombing are among the at least 42,289 Palestinians—most of them women and children—killed by Israel's 375-day assault on Gaza, according to officials there, United Nations agencies, and international human rights groups. Nearly 100,000 others have been injured, and at least 10,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of bombed-out buildings. Millions more Gazans have been forcibly displaced, starved, and sickened.
On Tuesday, multiple media outlets reported that the Biden administration last week warned Israeli leaders that they must take "urgent and sustained actions" to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza within 30 days or risk losing billions of dollars in military aid from Washington.
