Israel and Hamas at war, day 39 | A mass grave in Gaza’s main hospital

The largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, at the heart of the fighting between Israel and Hamas, had to bury dozens of dead in a mass grave, its director announced Tuesday, while thousands of civilians remain trapped there in poor conditions. disastrous, without water or electricity.

Several thousand Palestinians, patients, staff and civilians displaced by the war that has raged since October 7, are crowding the site of al-Chifa hospital, a huge complex in the center of Gaza City , sheltering according to Israel the infrastructures of the Islamist movement buried in a network of tunnels.

“There are bodies littering the aisles of the hospital complex and the refrigerated rooms of the morgues are no longer supplied” with electricity, the director of the al-Chifa hospital told AFP, adding that at least “179 bodies” had been buried Tuesday in a mass grave.

“We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” said Doctor Mohammed Abou Salmiya, specifying that among these bodies were those of seven premature babies who died due to lack of electricity to keep them alive.

A journalist working with AFP inside the hospital said the smell of decomposing bodies was overpowering.

Israeli tanks were massed on Tuesday at the gates of al-Chifa, while fighting and airstrikes in the surrounding areas continued throughout the night, he added, although less intense than in previous nights.

March for the hostages

Israel has been relentlessly striking the Gaza Strip since the attack launched on its soil against civilians 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, power in the besieged Palestinian territory.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli bombings killed a total of 11,240 people, mostly civilians, including 4,630 children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.

On the Israeli side, around 1,200 people were killed, according to the authorities, the vast majority civilians on the day of the attack of a scale and violence never seen since the creation of Israel in 1948.

The police said on Tuesday that they were investigating “several cases” of sexual violence committed according to them by Hamas commandos on October 7, ensuring that they had collected “multiple testimonies” concerning rapes.

The Israeli military estimates that some 240 people were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip on the day of the attack. She announced on Tuesday the death of Noa Marciano, a 19-year-old soldier hostage of Hamas, the day after the Islamist movement published a photo presenting her as “killed by an Israeli bombing”.

About a hundred relatives of hostages, their portraits printed on black T-shirts, left Tel Aviv on Tuesday for a 63-kilometer march to the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, to demand “the immediate release of all the hostages “.

On Monday, the armed wing of Hamas accused the Israeli authorities of “procrastinating” in discussions, via mediation from Qatar, on the possible release of dozens of hostages in exchange for that of “200 children and 75 women” imprisoned by Israel .

Mr. Netanyahu had raised in an interview with NBC the possibility of an agreement aimed at releasing hostages, a condition according to him for a cease-fire.

On Monday, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said soldiers “found signs” of the presence of hostages in a video filmed in a basement at Al-Rantissi Children’s Hospital in Gaza.

“Human shields”

The Hamas government said on Monday that all hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip, where the most violent fighting is concentrated, were “out of service”, due to lack of electricity and fuel.

US President Joe Biden called on Israel, of which the United States is a key ally, to exercise restraint, saying the al-Chifa hospital must “be protected”.

The UN continues to demand the sending of fuel to Gaza, in particular to power generators in hospitals.

The territory has been subjected since October 9 by Israel to a complete siege which deprives its population of water, electricity, food and medicine. Israel refuses to allow fuel to pass through, saying it could be used by Hamas for its military activities.

The Israeli army, which accuses the Islamist movement of using the sick and displaced as “human shields”, said it was not targeting the al-Chifa hospital. She reported “efforts” to transfer incubators from an Israeli hospital there.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 600 to 650 sick people, 200 to 500 staff members as well as 1,500 displaced people were still in al-Chifa hospital during the night of November 12 to 13. The Deputy Minister of Health of the Hamas government, Youssef Abou Rich, present in the hospital, reported around 20,000 displaced people.

A new scourge: rain

The Israeli army, which has announced the deaths of 47 soldiers since the start of the war, claimed Tuesday to have taken possession of Hamas institutions in Gaza City, including the Parliament and government and police buildings.

According to Hamas, “more than a hundred” people have been killed since Monday in Israeli bombings, one of which left 30 dead in the Indonesian hospital in Jabaliya, a huge refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has “lost control in Gaza” and its fighters are “fleeing south,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday. According to the UN, more than 1.6 of the territory’s 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war.

In recent days, tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the north of the Gaza Strip, transformed into a field of ruins, after Israel opened evacuation “corridors”.

In the south of the territory, which is also not spared from the bombings, hundreds of thousands of displaced people are massed near the border with Egypt, in a catastrophic humanitarian situation.

International aid is arriving slowly through the Rafah border post, but in very insufficient quantities according to the UN.

Refugees who were surviving on little water, tiny food rations and crowded into tents or in schools transformed into makeshift camps are now threatened by a new scourge: rain.

“We are completely soaked, all our clothes are soaked, our mattresses, our blankets too, even a dog could not stand this life,” says Ayman al-Joueidi, installed in the courtyard of a UN school in Rafah.

In Khan Younes, still in the south, 90 patients are in danger of death due to the lack of electricity in the Al-Amal hospital, housing thousands of displaced people, where the only generator has stopped working, according to the Crescent- Palestinian red.

At the European Hospital of Khan Younès, a doctor from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Doctor Tom Potokar, described on burns all over the body, shrapnel wounds, infections.