GAZA CLAIMS HOSPITALS TARGETED
With food and medical supplies also scarce, a senior UN World Food Programme official said a new system was being tested to bring aid into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, potentially allowing imports to ramp up. However, Israel has not yet agreed to open the crossing.
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have already been forced from their homes, many fleeing several times. With fighting raging across the length of the territory, residents and UN agencies say there is now effectively nowhere safe to go, though Israel disputes this.
In Khan Younis, the dead and wounded arrived through the night at the overwhelmed Nasser hospital.
A medic ran out of an ambulance with the limp body of a small girl in a pink tracksuit. Inside, wounded children wailed and writhed on the tile floor as nurses raced to comfort them. Outside, bodies were lined up in white shrouds.
Footage obtained by Reuters inside another hospital in Deir al-Balah, the Jaffa hospital, showed extensive damage from a strike on a mosque next door. The obliterated ruins of the mosque could be seen through the blown-out windows.
Medical workers in northern Gaza, where some of the heaviest fighting is taking place, accused Israel of targeting hospitals and ambulances.
An ambulance worker in Gaza City’s Shejaiya district told Reuters crews were often unable to respond to calls from the wounded and said their teams came under Israeli fire, asking that his name not be printed for fear of reprisals.
Mohammed Salha, a manager at al-Awda hospital, said Israeli forces had besieged the hospital for days with tanks, shooting people trying to get in or out. They shot dead a woman in the street and a hospital worker standing at a window, he said.
The health ministry said Israeli forces had shot dead two medical staffers inside Kamal Adwan hospital, also in northern Gaza, on Saturday.
Jaffa Medical Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, said it had stopped operating on Friday due to extensive damage when Israel bombed a mosque nearby.
Northern Gaza families were posting messages on the internet pleading with emergency crews to venture into Gaza City.
Asked for comment on Palestinian accounts of attacks on medical facilities, a spokesperson for the Israeli military said it followed international law and takes “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm”.
The military has previously said Hamas operates from medical facilities, releasing footage to support that claim. Hamas has denied doing so.
Source: CNA
