Hundreds of people were murdered in the strike on the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City late on Tuesday, local time, according to the health ministry of the enclave.
The big picture: Israeli military officers claimed responsibility for the attack, although Israel denied any participation and placed the blame on Palestinian Islamic Jihad. According to the Hamas administration, many individuals were seeking refuge or were being treated in hospitals when the strike occurred.
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sita, an MSF physician in Gaza who was at the Ahli Arab hospital at the time of the strike, recalled that “we were operating in the hospital when there was a big explosion and the roof fell on the operating room.” It’s a homicide. as evidence.
According to a Palestinian civil protection officer, the attack’s pictures are “indescribable.”
Spokesman Major Mahmoud Basal declared, “What happened was a massive slaughter in every sense of the word, a genocide against our people, and the world must respond.” An operational system investigation, according to a statement from the IDF, “indicates that terrorists in Gaza fired a barrage of rockets at the time the incident took place, passing near to the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza.”
The unsuccessful rocket launch at a hospital in Gaza, according to information from several sources at our disposal, was carried out by Islamic Jihad, the statement stated. The brutal terrorists in Gaza, not the IDF, assaulted the hospital, and the entire world needs to know this. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remarked. Those who murdered our children are also murdering their offspring. The Israeli charge was refuted by the PIJ.
Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas, urged for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to fight Israeli soldiers and settlers and said the “hospital slaughter” was “a turning moment.”
The larger picture: After the strike by Hamas on October 7, Israel maintained its intensive bombing of the region.
Israel ordered the evacuation of more than 1 million Palestinians residing in Gaza on Friday, but hospital workers, many Palestinians, and others claimed it was impossible due to continued airstrikes, a deteriorating humanitarian and healthcare situation, and a lack of available housing. Almost the size of Detroit, this little enclave.
How they are putting it: The strike at the hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday was “functioning, with patients, health and care personnel, and internally displaced individuals housed there,” according to the World Health Organization.
The UN health organization stated that “WHO asks for the urgent active protection and health treatment of civilians.” Orders for evacuation must be cancelled. International humanitarian law must be upheld, which calls for active protection of health care and never making it a target. Numerous Arab nations swiftly denounced the incident.
The Qatari foreign ministry issued a statement saying, “The broadening of Israeli assaults to cover hospitals, schools, and other population centers in the Gaza Strip is a worrying escalation.” According to the Russian and UAE delegations to the UN, an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council has been sought for Wednesday to discuss the attack on the Gaza hospital.
The conference with President Biden, King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was scheduled to take place in Jordan on Wednesday.
The explosion and the deaths at the hospital left President Biden “angry and terribly grieved,” he said in a statement.
In his conversation with Netanyahu and King Abdullah II, according to Biden, he also gave the order to his national security staff to “continue to gather intelligence about precisely what transpired.”
We mourn the patients, medical staff, and other innocent people who were killed or hurt in this catastrophe, he said. The United States stands strongly for the protection of civilian life throughout combat.
Look at: Prior to his meeting with Biden, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was in Jordan. He is now returning to Ramallah to call an urgent gathering of the Palestinian leadership.
Hussein al-Sheikh, a top adviser to Abbas, said on social media that “the hospital slaughter cannot be permitted by the sensibilities or morality of nations, and what is happening is genocide.” “We want quick action from the world community to halt this massacre. Prejudice and silence are no longer permitted. Anger with the Palestinian Authority has grown as a result of protests in Ramallah and other occupied West Bank cities.
