‘Horrendous events’ in Gaza ‘beggar belief’: UN rights chief
The level of violence ravaging Gaza in recent days is unfathomable, the UN rights chief said Sunday, with attacks on schools harboring displaced people and a hospital turned into a “death zone”.
“The horrendous events of the past 48 hours in Gaza beggar belief,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement.
He spoke as the World Health Organization scrambled to evacuate the last remaining patients and staff from the Shifa Hospital, with UN officials describing the Palestinian territory’s largest health facility, raided last week by Israeli troops, as a “death zone”.
Elsewhere in northern Gaza, a Hamas health official said more than 80 people were killed on Saturday in twin strikes on Jabalia refugee camp, including on a UN school sheltering displaced people.
“The killing of so many people at schools turned shelters, hundreds fleeing for their lives from Shifa Hospital, amid continuing displacement of hundreds of thousands in southern Gaza, are actions which fly in the face of the basic protections civilians must be afforded under international law,” Turk said.
He described the images purportedly taken in the aftermath of the reported Israeli strike on the UN-run Al-Fakhura School as “horrifying”, and “clearly showing large numbers of women, children and men severely wounded or killed”.
“The pain, dread, and fear etched on the faces of children, women and men is too much to bear,” Turk said.
“How much more violence, bloodshed and misery will it take before people come to their senses? How many more civilians will be killed?”
‘Death zone’
The World Health Organization said it had led an assessment mission to Shifa Hospital and determined it was a “death zone”, urging a full evacuation.
The United Nations health agency said it was developing an evacuation plan for nearly 300 remaining patients and 25 health workers after the Israeli military had earlier ordered the evacuation of some 2,500 displaced people sheltering on the hospital grounds.
Columns of sick and injured – some of them amputees – were seen making their way out of Shifa Hospital Saturday towards the seafront without ambulances along with displaced people, doctors and nurses, as loud explosions were heard around the complex.
All premature babies at the hospital were later evacuated, a health official in the territory said.
Eight babies had died in the past days after power supplies ran out at Shifa, with not enough electricity to continue operating the incubators, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
Deal on captives
A deal to free captives Hamas seized in its October 7 attack on Israel now hinges on “minor” practical issues, Qatar’s prime minister said Sunday, without giving details or a
timeline.
“The challenges that remain in the negotiations are very minor compared to the bigger challenges; they are more logistical, they are more practical,” Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told a joint press conference with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
Qatar has helped broker talks aiming to free some of the 240 captives in return for a temporary cease-fire, a mediation effort that has so far led to the release of four captives.
Israel has so far refused to heed calls for a cease-fire before all the captives are released.
Israel’s casualties
The regime’s army said Sunday three more soldiers were killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, raising the number of troop deaths there to 62 since the conflict began.
Fighting raged Sunday in Gaza, more than six weeks after a shock Hamas attack sparked an air and ground offensive by Israel.
In Gaza, around 12,300 people, more than 5,000 of them children, have been killed in the conflict.
Israeli ship seized
Since the beginning of the conflict, resistance groups, including Ansarullah movement in Yemen, have warned Israel over its brutal attacks on Gaza.
Yemen said on Sunday that its armed forces have seized an Israeli ship and detained dozens of its crew members in the Red Sea following warnings by the Yemeni Ansarullah movement that the force will target any Israeli ship crossing the country’s territorial waters.
52 people who were on board the ship were also arrested.
The incident came after a spokesman for Ansarullah, Yahya Sarea, said on Sunday the group will target all ships owned or operated by Israeli companies, or carrying the Israeli flag.