The Israeli army denied responsibility for an attack on a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday, saying that military intelligence information indicated that the hospital “was subjected to a failed missile attack launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement in the Strip.”
But a spokesman for Islamic Jihad denied Israel’s account of the movement’s responsibility for the Gaza hospital strike.
An Israeli army spokesman said in a statement, “An analysis of the Israeli army’s operational systems indicates that terrorists in Gaza fired a barrage of rockets that passed near Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza at the time it was hit.”
He added, “The intelligence information we obtained from multiple sources indicates that the Islamic Jihad movement is responsible for launching the failed missile that hit the hospital in Gaza.”
In turn, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “brutal terrorists” in Gaza attacked the hospital.
The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced on Tuesday that at least 500 people were killed in an “Israeli air strike” on the National Arab Hospital in the Strip, according to what was reported by Reuters.
The Palestinian News Agency (Wafa) indicated that hundreds were killed and wounded in the bombing of Al-Ahly Al-Arabi Hospital (Al-Maamdani) in a neighborhood in Gaza City.
The Palestinian Agency reported that aircraft launched a raid on the hospital while thousands of displaced citizens were present who took refuge there after their homes were destroyed and were searching for a safe place.
Video clips showed ambulances transporting the dead and injured, in addition to a fire breaking out as a result of the bombing. A video clip captured the moment the hospital was bombed.
Convictions
The raid sparked shock and condemned international and Arab reactions. Prime Minister Al-Kandari, Justin Trudeau, described the attack as “horrific and completely unacceptable.”
Trudeau said the news from Gaza is “catastrophic, it’s terrible, it’s unacceptable.”
The World Health Organization also strongly condemned the attack on the National Arab Hospital in Gaza. Egypt condemned “in the strongest terms” the Israeli air strike, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians, saying that the international community must urgently intervene to stop such violations.
A statement by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday that Cairo “considered this deliberate bombing of civilian facilities and targets a serious violation of the provisions of international and humanitarian law, and of the most basic values of humanity. It calls on Israel to immediately stop its policies of collective punishment against the people of the Gaza Strip.”
Jordan “strongly condemned the Israeli attack on a hospital in Gaza, which led to the death of hundreds of injured and displaced civilians,” according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
The Jordanian statement stressed the need to provide protection for the Palestinian people, and called for immediate concerted efforts to stop the raging war in Gaza.
The Palestinian presidency, through its spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeina, considered the Israeli air strike on a hospital in Gaza “genocide and a humanitarian catastrophe.”
The Associated Press quoted a senior Palestinian official as saying that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “cancelled his scheduled meeting with Biden,” following the Israeli raid.
The meeting was scheduled to take place in Jordan, and the senior Palestinian official said that Abbas “decided to return to Ramallah.”
At the same time, Palestinian Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh condemned the attack and described it as a “horrific crime,” saying that countries supporting Israel bear full responsibility “for this crime.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the attack on a hospital in Gaza is “the latest example of Israeli attacks devoid of the most basic human values.”
“I call on all of humanity to take action to stop this unprecedented brutality in Gaza,” Erdogan wrote on the social media platform X.
In a statement, the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced “in the strongest terms the Israeli bombing of Al-Ahly Baptist Hospital in Gaza, which killed hundreds of civilians.”
The Qatari statement said, “The expansion of Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip to include… hospitals, schools, and population centers is considered a dangerous escalation in the course of the confrontations and portends dire consequences for the security and stability of the region.”
#Israeli #army #accuses #Islamic #Jihad #bombing #Gaza #hospital.. #movement #denies
2023-10-17 20:13:20
