Americans who managed to escape war-torn Israel have revealed the overwhelming emotions they felt when they landed back in the US, with many revealing they had to leave their loved ones behind in Israel in order to escape with their own lives. 

The heartbreaking interviews come as Hamas and Israel’s military have accused each other of launching a missile attack on a Gaza hospital that killed more than 500 people, including women and children. 

One man, called Scott Forester, told the BBC: ‘I got to the gate, I sat down and I started crying.

‘I’m very grateful to be here, but my heart is just heavy and sad because of the people that I left behind.’ 

Stacey Miller, meanwhile, said: ‘I’m leaving my husband, my children, my grandchildren. 

Scott Forester (pictured) said he burst into tears upon arriving back in America

Stacey Miller (pictured) said she was forced to leave her family behind in order to get home safely

The US is currently evacuating thousands of its citizens from Israel following the outbreak of war in the region

Drew Edelman said: ‘Until the plane touched down and I got here, I was just crying, walking through customs. 

‘I’m so happy to be back in America right now.’

Bryan Stern, who led a rescue mission to get American citizens out of Israel, said: ‘We’ve been working really hard, I haven’t slept in four days. Bottom line is these are American citizens. 

‘I don’t care if they’re Jewish or Christian or Muslim, we rescued everybody.

Drew Edelman (pictured) said: ‘Until the plane touched down and I got here, I was just crying, walking through customs.

Bryan Stern, who led a rescue mission to get American citizens out of Israel, said: ‘We’ve been working really hard, I haven’t slept in four days’

‘We’re just really, really, really happy to be home. There’s lots of Americans stuck in a lot of other places right now.’

The US is currently in the middle of its evacuation program for its citizens, and has been utilizing both boats and planes to get as many people out as possible. 

On Tuesday, the first batch of US citizens leaving Israel by boat managed to land safely in Cyprus. 

Around 160 people were aboard the luxury liner Rhapsody of the Seas, which was chartered and left Haifa before docking at Limassol early on Tuesday morning. 

A spokesperson told local media that more evacuation boats were expected over the following 12 hours. 

Spokesman Hagari told a press briefing that at the time of the incident, the Israeli army was not conducting air operations near the hospital and the rockets that hit the building did not match theirs

A woman reacts while holding a pillow as she stands amidst debris outside the site of the Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza on October 18, 2023

People react at the area of Al-Ahli hospital, where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other, in Gaza City, October 18, 2023

Cyprus has been used as a transit hub for several governments to evacuate their civilians since war broke out between Hamas and the Israeli state. 

The conflict, the region’s bloodiest in decades, has escalated dramatically and both sides have been accused of committing horrific war crimes. 

Israel stands accused of using white phosphorus in the war that has already left 2,600 people dead. 

While white phosphorus can legally be used on battlefields to make smoke screens, generate illumination, mark targets or burn bunkers and buildings, it is considered an incendiary weapon under Protocol III of the Convention on the Prohibition of Use of Certain Conventional Weapons. 

This convention prohibits using incendiary weapons against military targets located among civilians, although Israel has not signed it and is not bound by it.

The Israel Defence Forces shared raw footage, revealing the moment a rocket misfired and exploded at the same time the Gaza hospital was hit

Pictured: The burning hospital building after the strike on Tuesday night 

Wounded Palestinians wait for treatment in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, central Gaza Strip, after arriving from al-Ahli hospital following an explosion there on Tuesday 

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Palestinians at Al Shifa hospital mourn over the body of a family member after the al-Ahli hospital explosion on Tuesday 

Palestinian paramedic carries a child injured in an air strike at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern of Gaza Strip on Tuesday

Meanwhile, Hamas was accused of killing civilians in the early hours of the conflict, which began on October 7 when several terrorists were seen paragliding over a music festival near the border with Gaza. 

Both sides have accused each other of blowing up a Gaza hospital, killing hundreds of civilians. 

IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN that Israel ‘categorically’ do not intentionally strike any sensitive facilities, including hospitals.

‘We did not strike that, and that the intelligence that we have suggests that it was a failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad,’ he said.

‘I want to add, categorically, that we do not intentionally strike any sensitive facilities, and definitely not hospitals,’ he said.

Video from the hospital showed fire engulfing the building and the hospital’s grounds strewn with bodies, many of them young children

Israel denied responsibility for the blast at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday, claiming it was a rocket misfired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists

Wounded Palestinian children lay at the al-Shifa hospital, following Israeli airstrikes, in Gaza City on Tuesday 

The incident has sparked a venomous blame game, with a spokesman for Islamic Jihad accusing the IDF of ‘trying to cover for the horrifying crime and massacre they committed against civilians.’

Hellish video taken from the hospital, which was sheltering around 6,000 Palestinians and is funded by the Anglican Church, shows fire engulfing the building and the dozens of bodies strewn over the ground, many of them young children.

Ambulances and private cars rushed casualties from the al-Ahli blast to Gaza City’s main hospital, al-Shifa, already overwhelmed with wounded from other strikes, said its director, Mohammed Abu Selmia.

‘We are squeezing five beds into a single tiny room. We need equipment, we need medicine, we need beds, we need everything,’ Mr Abu Selmia said, warning that the fuel supply for the hospital’s generators will run out on Wednesday.

‘I think Gaza’s medical sector will collapse within hours.’ 

The head of the World Health Organisation today issued a stark warning, saying the situation in Gaza is ‘spiralling out of control’ while calling for the ‘violence on all sides to stop’ so that Israel’s siege can be lifted and medical supplies let into the enclave.

‘Every second we wait to get medical aid in, we lose lives,’ Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. ‘We need immediate access to start delivering life-saving supplies.’

The horrific strike has raised already heightened fears that the Hamas-Israel conflict will engulf the Middle East, with Iran’s foreign minister declaring that the ‘time is over’ for Israel.

Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist group based in Lebanon, called for ‘a day of unprecedented anger’ against Israel, while Libya’s foreign ministry accused the Jewish state of ‘war crimes and genocide’.

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister, later arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday night after the hospital bombing – a remarkable show of unity between two former sworn enemies.

While there, Amir Abdollahian issued a stark warning to Israel, with the foreign minister tweeting: After the terrible crime of the Zionist regime in the bombing and massacre of more than a thousand innocent women and children in the hospital, the time has come for the global unity of humanity against this fake regime more hated than ISIS and its killing machine. Time is OVER.’