The largest hospital complex in the Gaza Strip suffered a deadly strike on Friday in the north of the Palestinian territory where fighting rages between the Israeli army and Hamas, while civilians continue to flee towards the south.
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas reported 13 deaths in this strike on the Shifa hospital complex which it attributed to Israel, while the Israeli army did not immediately communicate on such an operation.
On Thursday evening, an Israeli army spokesperson indicated that an army division was carrying out major operations in an area “very, very close to Shifa Hospital”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, reiterated Thursday evening that Israel was not seeking to “govern or occupy” the Gaza Strip, more than a month after the start of the war between Hamas and Israel which led to a dramatic humanitarian situation in this besieged Palestinian territory, according to the UN and NGOs.
On October 7, commandos from Hamas, the movement that controls the Gaza Strip, carried out on Israeli soil a bloody attack against civilians of a scale and violence never seen since the creation of Israel in 1948.
Hamas “military quarter”
In retaliation, Israel declared a war to “eradicate” Hamas, relentlessly shelling the Gaza Strip, in the hands of the Islamist movement. Since then, Israeli bombings have left 10,812 dead, mainly civilians, including 4,412 children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
On the Israeli side, at least 1,400 people have died since the start of the war, according to the authorities, the majority of them civilians killed on the day of the attack by Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union. Additionally, 239 people were kidnapped on October 7 and are being held in Gaza.
While Israeli ground troops, supported by bombings, tighten their grip on Gaza City (north) which, according to the army, shelters the “military quarter” of Hamas, the fighting saw no respite on Friday.
According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, the surroundings and sites of several hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip were shelled during the night from Thursday to Friday, including that of Shifa.
AFTV footage shows massive shelling Thursday evening near the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, which caused panic at the facility.
“Thirteen martyrs and dozens injured in an Israeli strike on the Al-Shifa compound today” in Gaza City, said Salama Maarouf, head of the Hamas press office.
Earlier, the director of the hospital, Mohammed Abou Salmiya, reported two deaths and 10 injured, mostly children.
A 32-year-old father who calls himself Abou Mohammed told AFP that he took refuge in al-Shifa, in the west of Gaza City, with 15 of his relatives after bombings on his neighborhood in ballast.
“No safe place”
“There is no safe place, the army hit al-Shifa, I don’t know what to do anymore,” he said.
For years, Israel has accused Hamas of using hospitals to carry out attacks or hide tunnels.
Israel has agreed to daily humanitarian “pauses” to allow civilians to flee the northern Gaza Strip to the south, according to the United States.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed these pauses on Friday, while saying that there was “still much to do” to protect civilians.
Israel “says there is a humanitarian truce, but it targeted civilians leaving al-Shifa hospital,” Salama Maarouf, head of the Hamas government press office, told AFP. in Gaza.
“The occupier bombs everything, even the so-called secure corridors, where we find dead people. Entire families died fleeing” to the south, he added.
Mr. Netanyahu once again rejected any ceasefire with Hamas, which he said would amount to a “surrender”.
The Israeli army opened “an evacuation corridor” on Sunday, but Palestinians reported persistent fighting along this route, used by 100,000 people since Wednesday, according to data from the Israeli army and the Coordination Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
” No water “
The crowd of men and women on foot, carrying their children in their arms, according to AFP, swelled the hundreds of thousands of refugees crowded in the south of the small territory, in disastrous conditions.
“We have no water, no toilets, no bakery,” said Oum Alaa al-Hajin, who found refuge in al-Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, in the south, after days of walk.
According to OCHA, the number of displaced people in Gaza now stands at 1.6 million people out of the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.
In the north, where hundreds of thousands of people still live, “the lack of food is increasingly worrying”, worries the UN.
Hospitals that have not yet closed lack medicine and fuel to run generators.
“Doctors use headlamps,” just like in the operating room, where surgeons operate “under local anesthesia,” says Ahmad Mhanna, doctor at Al-Awda hospital in Jabaliya.
While the UN Security Council is due to meet once again on Gaza on Friday, an international conference organized in Paris made it possible to reach one billion euros of commitments (CA$1.47 billion), intended to respond in particular to the needs of the UN to help the Palestinian population.
The narrow territory has been deprived of water, electricity, food and medicine due to the total siege imposed by Israel since October 9.
According to OCHA, only 65 aid trucks from Egypt, via the Rafah crossing, reached there on November 9, a “completely insufficient” volume.
The Rafah terminal also reopened on Thursday to allow the evacuation of foreigners, dual nationals and injured people.
Russia announced on Friday the sending of 25 tons of humanitarian aid to civilians in the Gaza Strip from Egypt.
The conflict threatens to spread across the region. Israel struck in Syria at dawn on Friday in response to a drone which fell on a school in Eilat (south) on Thursday, without causing any casualties, the Israeli army said.
The army also indicated “continue its operations to destroy the infrastructure” of the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, with which exchanges of fire are daily.