The Israeli army entered al-Chifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, on Wednesday, targeting what it presents as a strategic Hamas base installed in this site where thousands of Palestinians fleeing the war are refugees. .
The immense hospital complex, for several days at the heart of fighting between Israeli soldiers and Islamist fighters, represents a major objective for Israel, which has sworn to “annihilate” Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, since the attack bloody attack launched by the Palestinian movement on its soil on October 7.
Several international organizations expressed concern about the fate of civilians, while the UN said it was “horrified” by the Israeli operation.
The war in Gaza is “a war against the existence of the Palestinians,” said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Early Wednesday, dozens of Israeli soldiers, some hooded and firing in the air, stormed al-Chifa hospital in the center of Gaza City and ordered the men to surrender, according to a contributing journalist. with the AFP on site.
“All men aged 16 and over, raise your hands in the air and exit the buildings towards the inner courtyard to surrender,” they shouted in Arabic.
Israel announced that it was carrying out “a targeted and precision operation against Hamas in a specific sector of the al-Chifa hospital”, located in the north of the Gaza Strip.
Tanks in the hospital
Soldiers questioned people in the hospital, including patients and doctors, also searching crying women and children. Israeli tanks, which had been surrounding the hospital for several days, entered the building, stationed in front of various departments including the emergency room.
Hundreds of Palestinians, hands in the air, gathered in the hospital courtyard, while in the corridors, soldiers fired into the air as they went from room to room, visibly searching for Hamas fighters.
While the UN and NGOs are alarmed by the fate of civilians in hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army’s operations are concentrated, the latter specified that it had sent “Arabic-speaking medical teams and trained”, so that “no harm is caused to civilians used by Hamas as human shields”.
The UN and the international community must intervene “immediately” to put an end to this operation, said Hamas Deputy Health Minister Youssef Abou Rich, present in al-Chifa.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was “extremely concerned”, recalling that “patients, medical staff and civilians must be protected at all times”.
Around 2,300 people according to the UN, including patients, caregivers and war-displaced people are massed inside al-Chifa, without water or electricity due to lack of fuel to power the generators.
Doctors and international NGOs say these civilians cannot get out, trapped by the fighting raging nearby.
The war was sparked on October 7 by a Hamas attack on Israeli soil, on a scale and violence not seen since the creation of Israel in 1948.
Around 1,200 people were killed in this attack, the vast majority civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
The army estimates that some 240 hostages were kidnapped by Hamas. She announced on Wednesday that 48 soldiers had been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, following the death of two additional soldiers.
In retaliation for the attack, Israel relentlessly shelled the small, besieged Palestinian territory and launched a ground operation on October 27 against Hamas.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli bombings killed 11,320 people, mostly civilians, including 4,650 children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
“Silence of the Security Council”
During the night, the Israeli army said it had “informed the competent authorities in Gaza that all military activities within the hospital had to cease within 12 hours” but that this “unfortunately had not been the case” .
Israel believes that al-Chifa hospital houses strategic Hamas infrastructure, including in tunnels beneath the complex. Hamas denies this and has called for a visit by “international commissions of inquiry”.
The White House also assured Tuesday that Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad, both classified “terrorists” by the United States, the European Union and Israel, had “a command and control center since the al-Chifa hospital.
Hamas rejected the US accusations, calling the remarks a “green light” for Israel “to commit further massacres”.
Washington also declared itself opposed to “exchanges of fire in a hospital where innocent, destitute and sick people seek to receive care”.
The director of al-Chifa, Doctor Mohammed Abou Salmiya, announced on Tuesday that at least “179 bodies” had to be buried in a mass grave. “There are bodies littering the aisles of the hospital complex and the refrigerated rooms of the morgues are no longer supplied” with electricity, he told AFP.
For Jordan, the Israeli raid “illustrates the barbarity that the silence of the UN Security Council authorizes.”
Tuesday evening, the Palestinian Red Crescent announced that it had evacuated another large hospital in the Gaza Strip, al-Quds, “besieged for more than ten days” and which had stopped operating due to lack of fuel.
“Bring back all the hostages”
In Israel, pressure is increasing on the government to obtain the release of the hostages.
The Forum of Families of Hostages and Disappeared demanded Tuesday evening that the government approve an agreement “to bring home all the hostages from Gaza”, while around a hundred relatives of hostages began a march from Tel Aviv towards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem.
In the center of the Gaza Strip, a new strike targeted a building in Deir al-Balah on Wednesday.
“We heard a loud explosion, we rushed and we found only the remains of women and children,” town resident Awni al-Douggi told AFP.
In the territory, subjected since October 9 by Israel to a complete siege, the population survives in disastrous humanitarian conditions, deprived of deliveries of water, electricity, food and medicine.
International aid is trickling in from Egypt. On Wednesday, a fuel truck entered from Egypt for the first time since the start of the war, “not at all sufficient” according to the UN.
Since November 5, around 200,000 Palestinians, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), have fled the north of the Gaza Strip, transformed into a field of ruins, after the opening by Israel of ” evacuation corridors.
According to OCHA, 1.65 of the territory’s 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war. Some of them took refuge in the south, near the Egyptian border, but hundreds of thousands of others remained amid the fighting in the north.