The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli forces attacked on Thursday near a hospital it runs in southern Gaza, killing several people, a day after another deadly Israeli attack outside the same medical facility.
On Wednesday, the enclave's health ministry said nearly two dozen people were killed after Israeli forces attacked the entrance to the facility, Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis. The Israeli military has announced an expanded offensive in Khan Younis, the largest city in the southern Gaza Strip.
Most of those killed on Wednesday were displaced people seeking shelter in and around the hospital, said Nebal Farsakh, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. About 14,000 displaced Palestinians were staying in Al-Amal, according to the World Health Organization, which sent a team to visit the hospital on Tuesday.
Medical centers have become havens for many of the nearly two million Palestinians who have been repeatedly forced to flee to safety by Israeli airstrikes and ground offensives, even as Israel launched attacks that hit the hospitals themselves. According to the WHO, most of Gaza's nearly three dozen hospitals no longer function as medical facilities
Ms. Farsakh said that Al-Amal Hospital and its immediate surroundings had been attacked five times in less than a week.
The Palestinian Red Crescent posted videos on social media on Wednesday about the aftermath of the attack, in which Ms. Farsakh said artillery and air strikes struck just outside the hospital's emergency room. The videos show Corpses lie on the street And Paramedics rush to the injured, including children, in ambulances. The videos could not be independently verified.
The Israeli military did not respond to a question on Wednesday about the locations of its attacks in Khan Younis. Its chief spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said at a daily news conference that the military had added another brigade to its forces in the city, which he described as “Hamas' main terror center.”
The Gaza Strip Health Ministry said dozens of people were killed in Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and on Thursday morning, including in Khan Younis.
The shelling around Al-Amal Hospital has been “relentless” in recent days, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said. It's on Tuesday shared video of his paramedics searching for bodies and injured people in the rubble of a bombed-out house in the neighborhood; less than an hour laterThe organization said the upper floors of its nearby headquarters were hit by shelling and several displaced people seeking shelter there were injured.
The WHO team that visited Al-Amal Hospital on Tuesday reported dire conditions there for both patients and civilians there.
“It was impossible to enter the hospital without stepping over patients and those seeking refuge,” it said, adding that only a few toilets and five of the hospital's nine ambulances were functional.
The WHO said its staff also saw “tens of thousands of people fleeing heavy strikes” in Khan Younis and central Gaza on Tuesday. People were traveling on foot, with donkeys or by car and had built temporary shelters along the road, it was said.
The Israeli military has advanced into the central Gaza Strip in recent days and nearly two million people have now crowded into the southern part of the tiny enclave, deepening the dire humanitarian crisis.
The WHO is “extremely concerned” about the additional burden that the latest wave of displacement will place on overwhelmed health facilities in the south, said the organization's representative for the West Bank and Gaza, Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, in a statement on Wednesday.
“This forced mass movement of people will also lead to more overcrowding and increased risk of infectious diseases, making the delivery of humanitarian assistance even more difficult,” he said.
—Anushka Patil and Raja Abdulrahim