Calls for restraint are growing in the face of escalating fighting around hospitals in Gaza, as the Gaza war enters its sixth week on Saturday.
Gaza Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra said that operations at the Al-Shifa Hospital complex, the largest hospital in the Strip, stopped today, Saturday, after fuel ran out completely.
Al-Qudra added to Reuters: “As a result, a baby died in the nursery section, where there are 45 newborns.”
In addition, the Palestinian Minister of Health announced that “39 children are threatened with death at any moment,” and one of them died in the Al-Shifa Medical Complex due to a power outage along with a lack of oxygen and medications.
The non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders stated on Saturday morning on the
On Friday, the Hamas government announced that at least 13 people were killed and dozens injured in a bombing on the Shifa complex, where civilians took refuge, as was the case in other hospitals in the region.
Maher Sharif, a nurse at the hospital who cooperates with Doctors Without Borders, said, “The scene is terrifying,” adding, “I saw bodies, including women and children.”
The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned on Friday that the health system in Gaza was “completely exhausted,” renewing his calls for a ceasefire.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “It is impossible to describe the situation on the ground: hospital corridors crowded with wounded, sick and dying people, crowded morgues, surgeries without anesthesia, tens of thousands of refugees.”
– ‘No justification’ –
For his part, French President Emmanuel Macron, in an interview with the BBC broadcast on Friday evening, urged Israel to stop the bombing that kills civilians in Gaza.
He said, “We share (Israel’s) pain and we share its desire to get rid of terrorism,” but “in reality today there are civilians being bombed. These children, these women, and these elderly people are being bombed and killed,” stressing, “There is no justification nor any legitimacy for that. Therefore, we urge Israel.” To stop.”
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by saying that “responsibility for any harm to civilians falls on Hamas,” which uses civilians as “human shields.”
Israel announced on Friday that it had reduced the death toll from the attack launched by Hamas on its territory on October 7, from 1,400 to 1,200 dead, and clarified that “this toll is not final.”
The authorities confirmed that the majority of those killed were civilians, and most of them occurred on the first day of the unprecedented attack. Hamas fighters also took approximately 240 people hostage and transported them to Gaza.
On the Palestinian side, more than 11,078 people, including more than 4,506 children, were killed in the Israeli bombing of Gaza, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health considered that “what is happening now against hospitals is a decision to kill those in them, as the wounded are dying due to the exhaustion of fuel and medical consumables,” calling on the world to “stop the massacres against hospitals.”
The director of the Shifa Hospital Complex, Muhammad Abu Salamiya, considered that Friday was “the day hospitals were targeted.”
“The occupation targeted all hospitals,” he told Agence France-Presse, as the sounds of bullets were heard near him.
– Summit in Riyadh –
The Israeli army has not yet commented on these accusations, but it confirmed on Friday: “If we see Hamas terrorists shooting from hospitals, we will do what we have to do. If we see Hamas terrorists, we will kill them.” On Friday evening, he announced the elimination of “about 150 terrorists.”
In total, 20 hospitals out of 36 in the Strip are out of service, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
On Friday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stressed “the need to do more” to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Saudi Arabia is organizing an emergency summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Riyadh on Saturday, during which Arab leaders and the Iranian president are expected to call on Israel to end its attack on Gaza.
After being subjected to continuous bombardment for more than a month and subjected to a complete siege, the humanitarian situation has become catastrophic in the Strip, where 1.6 of its 2.4 million people have been displaced, according to the United Nations.
The number of residents who have decided to leave Gaza City is increasing, which has become devastated and suffers from a major shortage of basic foodstuffs.
Israel agreed to daily humanitarian “truces” to allow civilians to flee to the south of the Gaza Strip to escape the battles, through an “evacuation corridor.”
30,000 people used this corridor on Friday, despite “explosions” that resulted in deaths, according to OCHA.
Among these refugees who used the corridor was Munir al-Rai, who came from the Beach refugee camp, where, according to him, “houses collapsed on their residents,” due to Israeli fire.
– Stop the “massacre” –
The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, called on Friday to stop the “massacre” in the Gaza Strip, saying, “This is our last chance to save what remains of our humanity.”
Lazzarini stressed that “leveling entire neighborhoods to the ground over the heads of their residents is not the solution to the horrific crimes committed by Hamas. On the contrary, it will open a very dark chapter in the history of the region.”
– ‘No water’ –
Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are crowded in the south of the besieged Strip in disastrous conditions, and are joined daily by crowds of those fleeing on foot.
Umm Alaa Al-Hajin, who took refuge in Al-Nasr Hospital in Khan Yunis after walking for days, said, “We have no water, no bathrooms, and no bakeries. We get a piece of bread every three or four days and we have to stand for hours in line.”
The area was deprived of water, electricity, food, and medicine due to the strict siege imposed by Israel on the Strip since October 9.
2023-11-11 08:13:00
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