Israel faces increasing calls on Saturday to protect civilians in Gaza, as fighting with Hamas intensified around hospitals in this small Palestinian territory where residents are seeking refuge to escape intense bombardment.
On the 36th day of this conflict triggered by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil, half of the 36 hospitals in Gaza which have been constantly bombed since October 7 are no longer functioning “at all” according to the World Health Organization. health (WHO).
On Saturday morning, clouds of smoke rose into the sky over Gaza City and numerous gunshots could be heard, according to AFP images.
The al-Chifa hospital, located in Gaza City, was the target of fire according to its director. “Al-Chifa was targeted all night by intense artillery fire, like other hospitals in Gaza City,” Mohammed Abou Salmiya said on Saturday. The director specified that the ambulances had not been able to pick up “dozens of dead” and “hundreds of injured” because of “the shots and projectiles”.
According to Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, “one person was killed and many others were injured in strikes on the intensive care building of al-Chifa hospital” on Saturday morning, the day after a bombing which left 13 dead in this same hospital complex, according to Hamas.
The Israeli military has not commented on these claims. On Friday, she affirmed that she would “kill” Hamas fighters “who fire from hospitals” in Gaza and said in the evening that she had eliminated “around 150 terrorists”.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli snipers fired on al-Quds hospital on Friday.
On the Israeli side, 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the unprecedented attack on October 7 in Israel by Hamas which also kidnapped 239 hostages, according to the authorities. Bombings carried out in retaliation by Israel have since left 11,078 dead in the Gaza Strip, mainly civilians, including 4,506 children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
“I saw corpses”
“The attacks against the al-Chifa hospital have intensified dramatically in the last few hours,” the NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Saturday on X (formerly Twitter).
Quoted by MSF, a nurse at the establishment, Maher Sharif, described a “horror scene”. “I saw dead bodies, including women and children,” she said.
Before the UN Security Council, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, renewed his calls for a ceasefire on Friday, stressing that the health system in the Gaza Strip was “on your knees”.
“The situation on the ground is impossible to describe: hospital corridors piled up with wounded, sick and dying people, overflowing morgues, surgeries without anesthesia,” he testified.
In an interview with the BBC, French President Emmanuel Macron “urged [é] Israel to stop bombings killing civilians. “These babies, these women, these elderly people are being bombed and killed. » There is “no justification” and “no legitimacy for this”, said the French president.
Israeli authorities regularly repeat that Hamas, a “terrorist organization” for Israel, the European Union and the United States, uses hospitals to carry out attacks or hide tunnels, which the movement denies.
The Israeli army is waging fierce battles against Hamas in the heart of Gaza City, where it says the “center” of the movement’s infrastructure is located, entrenched in a network of tunnels. In undated images that she released, soldiers walk on sand, weapons in hand, in a landscape of desolation.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, affirmed that “the responsibility for any harm done to civilians lies with Hamas”, which according to him uses them as “human shields”.
“We ask the international community to put pressure on the Israeli government to stop targeting hospitals and ambulances,” urged the director of al-Chifa hospital in Gaza City, Mohammed Abou Salmiya, on Saturday.
Humanitarian “breaks”
On the diplomatic front, Iranian President Ebrahim Raïssi arrived in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Saturday to participate in a summit of Arab and Muslim leaders to demand in particular an end to the war in Gaza. But Israel and its main ally, the United States, have so far rejected demands for a ceasefire.
Faced with the intensification of fighting in the north of the Gaza Strip, tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled in recent days, on the orders of the Israeli army, to seek refuge in the south.
Israel agreed to make daily humanitarian “breaks” to allow civilians to flee to the more spared south of the territory via a “corridor”.
This was again used on Friday by 30,000 people despite “explosions” which caused deaths there, according to the UN agency responsible for humanitarian coordination.
Shelled relentlessly for more than a month and subjected to a total siege, the small Palestinian territory where 1.6 of the 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced according to the UN is plunged into a catastrophic humanitarian situation.
” No water “
Gaza has been deprived of water, electricity, food and medicine due to the total siege imposed by Israel since October 9.
The director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, called on Friday for an end to the “carnage” in the Gaza Strip and deplored the deaths of more than 100 humanitarian workers from UNRWA since October 7.
Meanwhile, rockets continue to be fired daily from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The country is facing “multiple fronts,” army spokesperson Richard Hecht said on Friday. The Israeli army has indicated “continuing its operations to destroy the infrastructure” of Hezbollah in Lebanon, with which exchanges of fire at the border are daily.
An Israeli raid on Saturday targeted a vehicle in southern Lebanon, some 45 km north of the common border, in the first strike deep into Lebanese territory since the start of hostilities, Lebanese state media said.
A strike which comes before an expected speech by the leader of the powerful Shiite movement, Hassan Nasrallah, scheduled for 8:00 a.m. Quebec time.