Palestinian nurse Abdelsalam Barakat has said that he was inside an ambulance trying to transport patients with skull and chest fractures out of north Gaza when explosions struck at various times, Reuters reports.

“The ambulance was shaking so much,” he said of the terrifying Israeli air strikes on Friday that hit around him and his charges from Al-Shifa Hospital. “It placed them between life and death but we couldn’t do anything about it.”

However, the Health Ministry, a hospital director, and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society all said the convoy of five ambulances was evacuating wounded to supposedly safer south Gaza prior to possibly crossing the border to Egypt.

The first strike, at a roundabout a few minutes away from the hospital, injured a paramedic and a passenger in one of the ambulances, Barakat said.

The second, near the hospital gate as the convoy was returning there having abandoned the attempt to drive south, hit an ambulance ahead of his, killing a paramedic and others nearby, he added.