Al-Quds: Israel has attacked three hospitals in Gaza, including the enclave’s biggest medical complex, resulting in what appear to be multiple casualties, the Health Ministry in the Hamas-governed enclave has said.
Israel’s military struck a yard at the al-Shifa Hospital complex, where thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering, Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said on Friday.
“Israel is now undertaking these dangerous steps against the hospitals to put them completely out of commission and subsequently displace the people sheltering in them, as well as the patients and medics,” al-Qudra said to an international media out let..
Gaza’s health ministry has said 18 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals and 40 other health centres were out of service either due to damage from bombardment or lack of fuel.
Palestinian media published video footage on Friday of Al Shifa, that it said showed the aftermath of an Israeli attack on a parking lot where displaced Palestinians were sheltered and journalists were observing.
Israel wild aggression continued on Gaza on 41st day as the brutal Israel army has targeted 250 areas in Gaza martyring 241 Palestinians climbing the toll since October 7 to 10, 569 which included 4,324 children, 26,475 others injured.
As many as 70 percent population of Palestinians have become homeless whereas 200.3 million masses water, fuel and food have shut down.
The residents of Gaza are now transitioning from North to South.
Mohammad Abu Salmiya, director general of al-Shifa Hospital, said the strike hit civilians located next to a number of journalists in the yard, wounding four, including two critically.
“This led to a lot of casualties, including critical injuries. It could have been a massacre in this place because of the number of people in this complex,” Abu Salmiya the media.
“Before that, they bombed a building very close to the hospital. And now, there are heavy clashes and heavy bombing next to the hospital.”
Abu Salmiya said that medics and patients were in a state of fear due to near-constant explosions near the facility.
“Not a second goes by without bombing close to the hospital. Many of the hospital’s windows have been broken, and there is fear and anxiety amongst the medics and the patients and the displaced people,” he said.
“This is a war against the hospitals and a war against all the [Palestinian] citizens.”
Video of the apparent aftermath of the attack showed several people screaming and scrambling for cover, and an injured man lying on the pavement in a pool of blood.
Al-Qudra said that two children’s hospitals, Al-Rantisi and Al-Nasr, had also been hit by “direct attacks and bombardments” on Friday.
Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director, said on social media that medical facilities must be protected and that “no area is a free-fire zone”.
The attack on al-Shifa is the latest in a series of reported strikes on or near the Gaza City hospital in recent days.
Evacuations from the Gaza Strip into Egypt for foreign passport holders and Palestinians needing medical treatment have resumed through the Rafah crossing, a western news agency reported on Friday, citing Egyptian security and medical sources.
Departures from Rafah, the only crossing to the besieged enclave that does not border Israel, had been paused on Wednesday for a second time following bombardments on the route within Gaza leading to the border.
In the last 24 hours, at least 19 Palestinians have been reported killed by Israeli forces bringing the total number killed in the occupied West Bank to 176 since October 7.
Democrats are nearly evenly split on how President Joe Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.
The poll found 50 percent of Democrats approve of how Biden has navigated the conflict while 46 percent disapprove, showing a deep divide in the Democratic Party over the war.
The war could complicate Biden’s re-election effort as he tries to balance factions of his party with very different views on the conflict, an american news agency reported .
Israeli bombing hits vicinity of another Gaza hospital: Report
We are getting reports from our colleagues in Al Jazeera Arabic that the vicinity of Gaza’s Patient’s Friends Hospital has been hit by an Israeli strike.
Abu Salmiya, director general of al-Shifa Hospital, told Al Jazeera Arabic early on Friday that six people were killed following the Israeli strike that hit the al-Shifa Hospital complex.
The Palestinian news agency, Wafa, also reported six people killed.
When the White House announced that this humanitarian pause, as it’s calling it, would take place starting on Thursday, even as the White House was announcing this movement, Israeli officials were denying that they had agreed to any such thing.
It took a couple of hours before a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister actually said, ‘Yes, this four-hour pause is going to happen every day’, and that residents would get a three hours’ notice so that they could try to take advantage of that break in the fighting.
Now, whether or not this is successful, that’s certainly something that the Biden-Harris administration is hoping for and they very much would like to see these pauses extended.
Why Latin America’s ‘pink tide’ is taking a stand against Israel
As Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continues, world leaders have increasingly voiced concern over the rising death toll and human rights violations in the Palestinian enclave.
But in the West, few have been as vocal — or as severe in their criticism — as left-wing leaders in Latin America, many of whom came to power as part of a progressive wave known as the “pink tide”.
Analysts said the criticism sends a powerful signal from Latin America, a region that has largely maintained close, if sometimes tense, ties with Israel.
“It speaks to a Latin America that is not willing to tolerate such obvious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law,” said Mauricio Jaramillo, an international relations expert.
Israeli forces launch pre-dawn raid near occupied East Jerusalem: Report
At least one person was arrested in the raid, according to the Palestinian news agency, Wafa.
Wafa said the man was “assaulted” by Israeli forces while he was in his vehicle before he was arrested.
Israeli forces also targeted several homes in the town of Hizma, firing tear gas and carrying out searches, the news agency said.
The UN humanitarian affairs office also said in its latest report that two Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza in the 24-hour period between Wednesday and Thursday afternoon.
The video shows a burst of fire as several men, who appear to be rescue workers from the Palestinian Red Crescent, took cover from a series of explosions.
Protesters accuse The New York Times of bias in Gaza coverage
Demonstrators occupied the lobby of The New York Times office in New York, accusing the US media organisation of betraying a bias towards Israel in its coverage of the war in Gaza, the Associated Press reports.
Hundreds of protesters, led by a group of media workers calling themselves “Writers Bloc”, gathered outside the publication’s Manhattan headquarters, with many of them entering the building’s lobby for a sit-in and vigil that lasted more than an hour.
Videos on social media show the protesters covering the floor of the lobby with a self-produced newspaper, titled The New York Crimes, bearing the names of the thousands of people killed in Gaza. The protests read aloud the names of those killed, starting with the youngest first, according to videos shared on social media.
Omar Shakir, HRW’s Israel and Palestine director, was commenting on the strike on the al-Shifa Hospital complex’s yard.
“[Thousands] of civilians there. Hospitals must always be protected. No area is a free-fire zone,” Shakir wrote on social media.
Earlier, the rights group warned that patients and thousands of Palestinian civilians sheltering at the hospital complex faced “grave risks” amid Israel’s continued bombardment of Gaza and the Israeli ground offensive.
HRW is urging world leaders to act “to prevent further mass atrocities”, Shakir added.
More than 50,000 people fled areas from the north of Wadi Gaza towards the south through a “corridor” opened by the Israeli military.
Hundreds of thousands remain in the north of the territory, where they are struggling to secure the minimum amounts of water and food to survive.
All municipal water wells shut down again due to the lack of fuel, halting the supply of water for domestic non-drinking uses.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, opened two additional shelters.
UNRWA is now hosting 582,000 displaced Palestinians in 92 facilities south of Wadi Gaza in increasingly overcrowded conditions.
