Israel said on Monday that Hamas had “lost control in Gaza”, on 38e day of the war with the Islamist movement, a conflict which trapped thousands of displaced people living in “inhumane” conditions in several hospitals in the small Palestinian territory.
Hamas “has lost control in Gaza” and its fighters are “fleeing to the south” of this territory where it has been in power since 2007, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday in a video message broadcast by several TV channels. The Palestinian movement, classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union, did not immediately react to these assertions.
In the immense al-Shifa hospital, located in Gaza City, the largest in the territory, “the situation is very serious, it is inhumane”, Doctors Without Borders denounced on X, citing one of its surgeons present in the complex.
For days, clashes between Hamas fighters and Israeli soldiers have been concentrated in Gaza City, and paramedics cannot recover the dead and wounded from the surrounding streets, the doctor said.
“We have no electricity, no food, no water in the hospital,” he said. People will die in a few hours without working ventilators. »
American President Joe Biden on Monday asked Israel to protect the main hospital in Gaza, near which clashes are taking place between the Israeli army and Hamas fighters.
“I expect and hope for less intrusive actions regarding the hospital,” the American president said at the White House when asked by journalists whether he had spoken about it with Israeli leaders. . “The hospital must be protected,” he added.
Sleeping on the street
Mariam Jadallah, 63, told a journalist working with Agence France-Presse (AFP) in the hospital that she was forcibly evacuated to al-Shifa after the Israeli army destroyed the Swedish clinic on Saturday west of Gaza City.
“We slept in the street, then I left with six other women and several children” towards al-Shifa, she said. “Now I’m here, and I don’t know where my children and my loved ones are. »
Sick people and babies have already died, Hamas said, due to the lack of electricity in the hospital which houses around 600 patients and thousands of civilians seeking shelter.
Israel has been relentlessly striking the Gaza Strip since the attack launched on its soil by Hamas commandos on October 7, and has been carrying out a ground operation since October 27 with the aim of “wiping out” the Islamist movement.
On the Israeli side, around 1,200 people were killed, according to the authorities, the vast majority civilians killed on the day of the attack, of a scale and violence never seen since the creation of Israel in 1948.
The Israeli army, which on Monday reported 44 soldiers killed since the start of the war, estimates that some 240 people were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip on October 7.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the possibility of an agreement that would lead to the release of certain hostages, a condition he said for any ceasefire.
“Human shields”
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli bombings have killed 11,240 people since October 7, mostly civilians, including 4,630 children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
The Israeli army accuses the Palestinian Islamist movement of having installed its infrastructure in a network of tunnels under the al-Shifa hospital, transformed into a war zone in the heart of Gaza City, and of using sick people and refugees as “human shields”.
The Hamas government’s deputy health minister, Youssef Abou Rich, told AFP on Monday that “7 premature babies” and “27 patients in intensive care” had died since Saturday due to the lack of electricity in this area. hospital.
The situation is also dramatic at al-Quds hospital, another area where fighting is raging, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. “Our teams are stuck with patients and injured people, without electricity, water or food,” the organization said on X.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that 20 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were no longer functioning in recent days. “The world cannot remain silent when hospitals, which should be havens of peace, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, despair. Cease fire now,” said the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Legitimacy” of operations
For several weeks, the UN has been asking for fuel to be transported to the besieged Palestinian territory deprived of electricity, in particular to operate generators in hospitals.
Due to a lack of fuel, the trucks of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees will not be able to receive international aid coming from Egypt via the Rafah terminal on Tuesday, its boss, Thomas White, announced on Monday on X.
Israel refuses to let fuel enter Gaza, saying it could benefit the military operations of Hamas, in power since 2007.
But the head of Israeli diplomacy, Eli Cohen, admitted Monday that his country must strive to prolong “the legitimacy” of military operations in the face of increasing international pressure.
Israel, which is ordering the population to leave war zones, announced that an evacuation “corridor” would remain in place on Monday to allow civilians to leave al-Shifa hospital, while admitting that the sector was in danger. prey to “intense fighting”.
On Monday, the army announced that it “continued to carry out raids, targeting terrorist infrastructures installed in government buildings, in the heart of the population, including in schools, universities, mosques”. But, a military spokesperson, Richard Hecht, clarified on X: “Let’s be clear, our war is against Hamas, not against the population of Gaza. »
“The destruction is everywhere”
Smoke emerged from the Martyrs Mosque in the center of Gaza City, while alarms sounded in the deserted streets, according to images shot by AFP.
Images released Monday by the Israeli army show columns of soldiers advancing through fields of dusty ruins, supported by tanks and bulldozers, or opening fire from ambush in a destroyed building.
The army has also set up secure “corridors” to southern Gaza, which is less affected by the war.
Nearly 200,000 Palestinians, according to the Israeli army, had fled in three days, as of Saturday, to take refuge in the south, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are crowded together in disastrous humanitarian conditions.
According to the UN, about 1.6 of the territory’s 2.4 million people have been displaced by the war.
In Bureij, in the center of the Gaza Strip, families from the north continued to flee on foot or piled up on carts, children placed on hospital beds.
“The destruction is everywhere”, “even the birds have lost their lives”, said a Palestinian, Adel Shamallakh.
International aid is arriving slowly from Egypt, in very insufficient quantities, according to the UN. A Turkish ship carrying field hospitals arrived at the Egyptian port of al-Arish, near the Rafah border crossing.
Around 980 trucks loaded with aid have arrived in the Gaza Strip since October 21, including 76 on Sunday, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In the other direction, more than 550 foreign and dual nationals were able to leave Gaza on Monday, as well as 9 injured Palestinians, according to Palestinian services.
With Agence France-Presse in Washington