According to Palestinian health officials, a tragic incident occurred on Tuesday night in Gaza City, resulting in the loss of at least 471 lives at a hospital.

The cause of this catastrophic event is a subject of dispute: Palestinian authorities attribute it to an Israeli airstrike, while Israel's military contends that the explosion was a consequence of a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group.

Our correspondent, Rushdi Abu Alouf from the BBC, visited the scene, where the recovery of body parts was still underway.

The Al-Ahli Arab Hospital's courtyard is now littered with blood-stained mattresses, along with personal belongings and clothing left behind in the pandemonium that ensued after the explosion and the subsequent massive fire. Nearby in a parking lot, one can observe the charred remains of over a dozen vehicles.

The adjacent buildings have also suffered damage, appearing to be marked by shrapnel, although no significant impact crater is discernible. The atmosphere is one of distress, as people grapple to comprehend the events that transpired in a place that was meant to be safeguarded under international humanitarian laws.

"We left our home to come here," a woman who survived the explosion told the BBC. "We thought it would be safe, but then it got bombed."

Doctors said that most of the victims were among the several thousand civilians who had been sheltering at the hospital since Friday. They fled there after the Israeli military told civilians to evacuate the north of the Gaza Strip, as it stepped up its air strikes on militant group Hamas.

Many staying inside the courtyard were elderly or infirm, unable to leave for the south because they did not have access to transport.

One witness told me that they had been sitting on the ground when it was rocked by a huge blast.

People from all around the Gaza Strip soon arrived at the scene to try to help, he said. They collected bodies and began evacuating injured people.

Those in serious condition were taken away on motorbikes, while those less hurt had to make their way on foot to Shifa Hospital, 3km (two miles) away.

A second man said he heard something just before the blast but did not know what it was.

He explained that he returned to the hospital afterward because there was no other option.

"Where else can we go? Are we leaving like in 1948?" he asked, referring to the first Arab-Israeli war when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced or fled from their homes.

Despite their protected status, 20 hospitals in the north, including Al-Ahli Arab, have received orders to evacuate their patients and staff, according to the World Health Organization.

The UN agency has said the orders are impossible to carry out, given the current insecurity, critical condition of many patients, lack of ambulances, and shortage of beds elsewhere, and warned that it will "further worsen the current humanitarian and public health catastrophe".

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