The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says Israel’s assault has already killed 11,240 people, also mostly civilians, including thousands of children.
Israel says 46 of its troops have been killed in fighting in Gaza.
Biden called on Israel to use “less intrusive action relative to the hospital”, some of his most pointed comments on Israeli operations to date. “The hospital must be protected,” he told reporters.
Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner insisted Al-Shifa was “central in Hamas’s command and control capabilities”, but said troops were currently “stand-offish”.
“The idea is to try to evacuate the people, evacuate as many as possible,” he said.
Underscoring the role that global public opinion is playing in the war, both sides have repeatedly given vastly different accounts of events.
Lerner put the number of people inside the hospital at “a few hundred”, while the Hamas government’s deputy health minister Youssef Abu Rish, who is present in the hospital, said about 20,000 displaced people had sought refuge there.
“WINDOW OF LEGITIMACY”
Hamas’s brutal attacks of Oct 7 and Israel’s massive response have sparked protests around the world, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets in the Middle East, Europe and beyond.
Israel’s supporters insist it must protect citizens after the worst attack in the country’s 75-year history – an attack that brought painful echoes of past pogroms against the Jewish people.
But Israel’s critics point to the toll of a blockade and near-relentless bombing campaign on long-suffering civilians in Gaza.
Source: CNA
