[ad_1]
The latest developments from the Israel-Hamas war.
ADVERTISEMENTA United Nations team has said that some 291 patients are left at Gaza’s largest hospital after Israeli troops made all others evacuate.
Those left include 32 babies in extremely critical condition, trauma patients with severely infected wounds and others with spinal injuries who are unable to move.
The team was able to tour Shifa Hospital for an hour after about 2,500 displaced people, mobile patients and medical staff left the sprawling compound Saturday morning, said the World Health Organisation, which led the mission.
It added that 25 medical staff remained, along with the patients.
“Patients and health staff with whom they spoke were terrified for their safety and health, and pleaded for evacuation,” the agency said, describing Shifa as a ‘death zone’.
It said more teams will attempt to reach Shifa in coming days to try to evacuate patients to southern Gaza, where hospitals are also overwhelmed.
Israel has long alleged that Hamas maintains a sprawling command post inside and under Shifa. It has portrayed the hospital as a key target in its war to end the militants’ rule in Gaza following their wide-ranging attack into southern Israel six weeks ago, which triggered the war.
Hamas and hospital staff deny the allegations. Israeli troops who have been based at the hospital and searching its grounds for days claim they have found guns and other weapons and showed reporters the entrance to a tunnel shaft.
Saturday’s mass departure was portrayed by Israel as voluntary, but the WHO said the military had issued evacuation orders, and some of those who left described it as a forced exodus.
“We left at gunpoint,” Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. He said he saw Israeli troops detain three men.
Strikes continue in north and south
Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabalia refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded UN shelter Saturday.
The Israeli military, which has repeatedly called on Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, said only that its troops were active in the area “with the aim of hitting terrorists.” It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimise civilian harm.
In southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building near the town of Khan Younis on Saturday, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.
Doctors Without Borders, an international aid group, said a convoy of staff members and their families tried to evacuate northern Gaza in a clearly marked convoy on Saturday but turned back after shots rang out at a crowded Israeli checkpoint. On their way back to Gaza City, the convoy was attacked and a staffer’s family member was killed, it said. It was not immediately clear who attacked the convoy.
More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.
[ad_2]
Source link