The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israeli forces struck near a hospital it operates in southern Gaza on Thursday, killing several people, a day after another deadly Israeli attack in front of the same medical facility.
Over the two days, more than 40 people were killed in the strikes near the facility, Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, the aid group said. The Israeli military has announced an expanded offensive in Khan Younis, the biggest city in southern Gaza.
Most of those killed on Wednesday were displaced people who were seeking shelter in and around the hospital, said Nebal Farsakh, a spokeswoman for the Palestine Red Crescent Society. Some 14,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering at Al-Amal, according to the World Health Organization, which sent a team to visit the hospital on Tuesday.
Medical centers have become places of refuge for many of the nearly two million Palestinians who have been forced to flee for safety again and again because of Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground offensive, even as Israel launches strikes that hit the hospitals themselves. Most of Gaza’s nearly three dozen hospitals are no longer functioning as medical facilities, according to the W.H.O.
Ms. Farsakh said that Al-Amal Hospital and its immediate surroundings had been struck five times in less than a week. A displaced 13-year-old boy who had been sheltering at the hospital was also shot and killed by an Israeli drone on Christmas Eve, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said.
The aid group posted videos on social media of the aftermath of the strike on Wednesday, in which Ms. Farsakh said artillery and airstrikes hit just in front of the hospital’s emergency ward. The videos show bodies lying in the streets and medics rushing injured people, including children, into ambulances. The videos could not be independently verified.
The Israeli military did not respond to a question about the locations of its strikes in Khan Younis on Wednesday. Its chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said at a daily news briefing that the military had added another brigade to its forces in the city, which he described as a “main Hamas terror center.”
The Gazan Health Ministry said that dozens of people were killed overnight and Thursday morning in Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip, including in Khan Younis.
Shelling around Al-Amal Hospital has been “relentless” in recent days, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said. On Tuesday, it shared video of its medics looking for bodies and injured people in the rubble of a bombed-out house in the neighborhood; less than an hour later, the organization said that shelling had hit the upper floors of its nearby headquarters and injured several displaced people sheltering there.
The W.H.O. team that visited Al-Amal Hospital on Tuesday reported dire conditions there for both patients and sheltering civilians.
“It was impossible to walk inside the hospital without stepping over patients and people seeking refuge,” it said, adding that only a few toilets and five of the hospital’s nine ambulances were functioning.
The W.H.O. said its staff members also saw “tens of thousands of people fleeing heavy strikes” in Khan Younis and central Gaza on Tuesday. People were traveling by foot, donkey or car, and building makeshift shelters along the road, it said.
The Israeli military advanced into central Gaza in recent days, and nearly two million people have now squeezed into the southern part of the tiny enclave, deepening the dire humanitarian crisis.
The W.H.O. is “extremely concerned” about the additional strain the latest wave of displacement will put on overwhelmed health facilities in the south, the organization’s representative for the West Bank and Gaza, Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, said in a statement on Wednesday.
“This forced mass movement of people will also lead to more overcrowding, increased risk of infectious diseases, and make it even harder to deliver humanitarian aid,” he said.
— Anushka Patil and Raja Abdulrahim
Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/12/28/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news