About 1,200 people, including 500 minors, trapped under Gaza rubble

Some 1,200 people, among them about 500 minors, are believed to be trapped under the rubble in Gaza, according to health authorities. They based their estimates on distress calls they received.

“So many times medics say they hear victims scream, but they cannot do anything about it,” said Mohammed Abu Selmia, general director of Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s biggest medical centre, told AP.

Ali Ahad, a 37-year-old resident of Gaza City, said rescuers never came when Israeli air raids levelled the residential building next door.

He and his friends sprinted outside in their slippers, sifted through the rubble and struggled to lift men and women coated in blood out of the ruins with blankets. When they saw an ambulance racing down the street to Shifa Hospital they chased it, pounding on its windows to make it stop so they could squeeze their neighbours inside.

“You have people like us using our hands and we have zero experience doing such things,” he told AP. “There is no infrastructure. There is no capacity.”