The siege that Israeli forces have imposed on Gaza’s main hospital since last Friday has forced the excavation of a mass grave at the Al Shifa health complex in the Gaza Strip capital for dozens of bodies at risk of decay, including those of seven premature babies separated from the incubators due to a lack of power supply. According to various statements from international news agencies, those responsible for the hospital claim to have buried between 120 and 180 bodies. The hospital lacks food, water and electricity. In addition to around 650 patients, including 36 premature babies, who cannot be evacuated, there are around 7,000 civilians forced from their homes by the fighting and seeking refuge near their facilities. “The situation in Al Shifa is inhumane,” warns Doctors Without Borders on social networks.
Israel keeps the hospital complex under military siege and believes that one of the Hamas militias’ main command posts is hidden there. The White House assured this Tuesday that it has information from its intelligence services confirming that Hamas is using Al Shifa to carry out military “command and control operations” and, as expected, to store weapons, which, as announced, amounts to “war crimes.” from John Kirby, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
In recent hours, the army has offered to send portable incubators and fuel for power generators, but neither the center’s management nor the World Health Organization (WHO) believe that there are any guarantees of safety for patients in the presence of snipers and armed drones near Al Shifa are given, located in the center of the fighting, with Israeli tanks at the doors. According to the hospital’s director, Mohamad Abu Salmiyeh, the lives of 30 premature babies are in danger if the incubators do not work. Israeli military spokesmen also claim to have opened an evacuation route, something Palestinian health authorities deny.
All hospitals in northern Gaza have ceased operations, with the exception of Al Ahli. “They are out of action due to lack of electricity, medical supplies, oxygen, food and water, as well as shelling,” the UN Humanitarian Coordination Office said. Meanwhile, the WHO stressed this Tuesday that the evacuation of Al-Shifa Hospital was an “impossible task”. WHO has reported 20 patient deaths in the same center in the last 48 hours. United States President Joe Biden has warned that “the hospital must be protected” and called on Israeli authorities to carry out “less intrusive measures” around it.
Israel’s military spokesmen claim to have taken control of key public buildings in Gaza City – such as parliament, ministries and police posts – which have become a devastated battlefield in northern Gaza from where they fled. More than a million people since the start of the war. “Hamas has lost control of Gaza and its fighters have fled south,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday evening. The army, which has shown videos and photos of suspected weapons stored by Hamas in the basement of Gaza’s abandoned Rantisi hospital, has so far acknowledged the deaths of 46 soldiers in its ranks since the start of the war.
4,600 children dead
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An attack by Islamist militias on October 7 left around 1,200 people (three quarters of them civilians) dead in Israel and another 240 were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. Two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced by the conflict, which has killed at least 11,320 people, including more than 4,600 children and 3,100 women, according to Gaza health authorities. The same source claims that 25 of the 35 hospitals in the Palestinian coastal area are out of order.
Palestinian Health Ministry spokesman Asharf al Qidra told Portal on Tuesday that there were dozens of decomposing bodies in the Al Shifa compound that could not be transferred abroad because they could not count on the protection of the International Committee of the Red Cross. This humanitarian organization has reiterated that hospitals in times of war are protected by international humanitarian law. “But if they hide healthy fighters or weapons depots, they may lose this protection,” an official from the organization stressed.
In an unusual gesture, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and Israeli Health Minister Uriel Menachem Buso defended the army’s siege of several hospitals in Gaza for security reasons before the World Health Organization in Geneva, according to Efe agency.
Three health workers from Al-Shifa Hospital stitch up the head of a Palestinian girl injured by Israeli bombing without anesthesia.STRINGER (Portal)
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has warned that supplies currently entering the Gaza Strip only have food for 39% of people taking shelter in their schools during the offensive. Israeli. According to UNRWA, it currently hosts about 137,000 refugees in its 80 schools in the Gaza Strip. So far, according to the United Nations, only about 980 trucks carrying humanitarian aid have entered Palestinian territory through the Rafah border crossing, which connects the enclave with Egypt. According to the UN, before the war, about 500 trucks carrying humanitarian aid arrived in Gaza every day to meet the basic needs of its residents. A second group of 74 Spaniards managed to leave the Palestinian enclave via the Rafah border crossing this Tuesday and made their way to Cairo. They will join the first group to leave the Strip on Monday, made up of 40 Spaniards. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people displaced by the war in Gaza prepared to spend the night in the pouring rain.
In Tel Aviv this Tuesday, dozens of relatives of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas in the Gaza Strip began a five-day march towards Jerusalem. This poses a new challenge for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom they accuse of not doing enough to release the 240 people kidnapped in Hamas’ massive crackdown on October 7. The demonstrators want to end their protest on Saturday after a journey of about 65 kilometers in front of the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem.
Hamas has assured that it is ready to release 70 of these hostages (women and children) in exchange for a ceasefire and the release of 275 Palestinians (including women and children) held in Israeli prisons. This Tuesday, President Biden expressed “confidence” that the release of the hostages in a process mediated by Qatar will soon be achieved. “Hold on. “We’re arriving,” he told them in a message from Washington.
In the West Bank, at least eight Palestinians, suspected members of militias, died at the hands of the Israeli army this Tuesday, according to local health sources, seven of them in a battle in the town of Tulkarem.
On the complex northern front, the Israeli army has launched new attacks against southern Lebanon in response to rocket fire from the pro-Iranian group Hezbollah. Israeli warplanes have also bombed Shiite party militia positions in the south of the neighboring country. The anti-aircraft systems also intercepted a “suspicious target” on the coast of the city of Acre in the northwest of the country. Since hostilities began on the northern front, at least 103 deaths have been recorded: ten in Israel (seven soldiers and three civilians) and at least 93 in Lebanon, including 72 members of Hezbollah, eight members of Palestinian militias and 13 civilians. On the southernmost front, in the city of Eilat on the Red Sea coast, the Arrow missile defense system had to be activated this Tuesday because of the risk of missiles being fired by pro-Iranian rebels in Yemen.
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