‘Deadly Israeli strikes hit Gaza hospitals’ WHO: Twenty hospitals out of action entirely
Palestinians said Friday Israel’s deadly strike hit Gaza’s largest hospital compound as heavy fighting between Hamas and Israel has sent tens of thousands of civilians fleeing their homes.
Gaza’s Hamas government, which reported a toll of 13, and the director of the Shifa hospital, blamed Israeli troops for the strike at the facility sheltering people trying to flee the
fighting.
“Thirteen martyrs and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on Al-Shifa compound today” in central Gaza City, a statement said. While journalists have not yet been able to verify the claim, an AFP journalist reported seeing at least seven covered bodies outside the hospital.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said that the biggest hospital in the besieged strip and another with children on life support was coming under bombardment.
Twenty hospitals in Gaza were now out of action entirely, it said.
Asked about the Gaza Health Ministry’s blaming of an Israeli strike on the courtyard of Shifa hospital, WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said, “I haven’t got the detail on Al-Shifa but we do know they are coming under bombardment.”
Also, Palestinian officials said other strikes had damaged parts of the Indonesian Hospital and reportedly set fire to the Rantissi paediatric and cancer hospital in the northern part of the strip, where Israel claims Hamas fighters, who attacked it on October 7, are concentrated.
Israeli tanks, which have been advancing through northern Gaza for almost two weeks, have taken up positions around the Rantissi, Al-Quds and Nasser Children’s hospitals, raising concern for patients, doctors and evacuees there, medical staff said.
“Israel is now launching a war on Gaza City hospitals,” Mohammad Abu Selmeyah, director of Shifa hospital, told Reuters.
Israel did not immediately comment but claims it does not target civilians and goes to great lengths to avoid hitting them. It claims Hamas fighters have hidden command centers and tunnels beneath Shifa and other hospitals, allegations which Hamas denies.
With Palestinian officials reporting more than 11,000 dead, including 4,506 children, Israel has faced growing calls for restraint in its month-old war on Hamas.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday gave one of his most direct condemnations of the civilian death toll in Gaza.
“Far too many Palestinians have been killed. Far too many have suffered these past weeks,” Blinken said at a press availability in the Indian capital of New Delhi. He added that more needs to be done to “minimize harm to Palestinian civilians.”
No safe place in Gaza
Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces announced a six-hour long window Friday for an evacuation corridor along Salah Eddin Street for people to flee south from northern Gaza.
The top UN human rights official on Friday raised doubts over Israel’s unilateral establishment of “safe zones” in Gaza, saying that nowhere within the territory was safe for civilians. “Demands for civilians to relocate to an Israeli Defense Force(s)-designated ‘safe zone’ are also very alarming,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.
As the Palestinian territory remained under bombardment, France hosted a conference Thursday on humanitarian aid for Gaza with President Emmanuel Macron saying, “In the immediate term, we need to work on protecting civilians. To do that, we need a humanitarian pause very quickly and we must work towards a cease-fire”.
‘Stop arming Israel’
Also in southeast England, dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the entrances to a BAE Systems factory on Friday, targeting Britain’s biggest military supplier to call for an end to arms sales to Israel.
Holding up a sign saying, “Stop Arming Israel,” and waving Palestinian flags, about 50 people stood in front of one entrance at the Rochester, Kent, site, where BAE tests and assembles electronic equipment used on military aircraft and in surveillance systems.
BAE said it does not directly export any equipment to Israel, but the group is a tier-one supplier on the US-made F-35 fighter jets which are flown by Israel.
‘The New York War Crimes’
Also in the US, pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied the lobby of The New York Times on Thursday, demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza while accusing the media of showing a bias toward Israel in its coverage of the war.
The latest in a series of near-nightly demonstrations since the start of the war saw thousands march through Midtown Manhattan to protest Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
They remained for over an hour, reading off the names of thousands of Palestinians killed in Gaza, including at least 36 journalists whose deaths have been confirmed since the war began. They scattered editions of a mock newspaper – “The New York War Crimes” – that charged the media with “complicity in laundering genocide” and called on The Times’ editorial board to publicly back a cease-fire.
AFP, AP, Reuters, and CNN contributed to this report.