KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) – Patients, staff and refugees left Gaza’s largest hospital on Saturday as Israeli forces searched and facially scanned men among the evacuees and took some away. , some described a panicked and chaotic evacuation situation.
Israeli military is searching Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital claims to have the remains of a Hamas command center underneath the building – claim Hamas and hospital officials deny. Israel claims it was a voluntary evacuation, but all that was left behind were the skeletons of the Israeli army and medical workers caring for people who were too sick to move.
“They left us at gunpoint,” Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after leaving a crowded hospital with his family. “Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside.” He said he saw Israeli forces detaining three men.
The evacuation took place on the same day that internet and phone services were restored in the Gaza Strip, ending the chaos there. Telecommunications The power outage forced the United Nations to halt critical aid.
Elsewhere in northern Gaza, witnesses said Israeli airstrikes hit crowded U.N. shelters in the main fighting area, killing dozens of people in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp. Injured survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif said the incident caused extensive destruction to the camp’s Fakhoura school.
“The scene was horrifying. There were bodies of women and children on the ground. Some people were screaming for help,” Radwan said by phone. An Associated Press photo taken from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloody sheets.
The Israeli military warned residents of Jabaliyah to leave in Arabic social media posts, but said only that troops were operating in the Jabaliyah area “with the purpose of attacking terrorists.” It rarely comments on individual attacks, saying only that they target Hamas with minimal harm to civilians.
Philippe Lazzarini, Director-General of the United Nations Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA), said: “We have received horrific images and footage of scores of people being killed and injured at another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced people.” (Twitter) and called for a humanitarian ceasefire.
“Civilians cannot and should not endure this any longer,” UN Humanitarian Director Martin Griffiths said of X.
Attacks continued in southern Gaza. At least 26 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a house on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.
On Saturday, the military announced that it had been asked by the director of Shifa Hospital to assist those who wish to leave the hospital through a safe route.
The Israeli military said it had not issued an evacuation order. But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip’s health ministry, said the military had ordered the facility to be evacuated and hospitals had been given an hour to let people out.
Shifa doctor Ahmed Mokararati said on social media that about 120 patients remain, including those in intensive care and premature babies, where he and five other doctors are staying. .
According to the World Health Organization, 25 of Gaza’s hospitals are unable to function due to lack of fuel, damage or other problems, and 11 others are only partially operational, but people who have been discharged from hospitals are not yet fully operational. It is not clear whether he did.
Israel claims that hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target in ground attacks aimed at crushing Hamas and were used as command centers and weapons depots for the militants, claims both Hamas and medical staff deny. ing. Israeli forces surrounded or entered several hospitals.
The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7thThe militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians. Approximately 240 men, women, and children were abducted.. 52 soldiers have been killed since the Israeli offensive began.
More than 11,500 Palestinians have died in the war, according to the Palestinian Health Authority. A further 2,700 people are reported missing. believed to be buried under rubble.count do not differentiate The killings occurred between civilians and combatants, but more than two-thirds of the dead were women and children. Israel says it has killed thousands of fighters.
growing frustration
Gaza’s main power plants shut down early in the war, and Israel cut off power. Fuel is therefore needed to power the generators needed to run telecommunications networks, water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals, and other critical infrastructure.
Juliet Touma, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Palestine Refugee Agency, said on Friday that 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) of fuel, enough for two days, would be released after Israel agreed on Friday to allow that amount of fuel for U.N. use. He said fuel had arrived. It will also make an additional 10,000 liters (2,642 gallons) available to keep telecommunications systems running.
The United Nations has warned that Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are severely lacking in food and water, and said the amount of fuel provided is only half of minimum daily needs.
It is not immediately clear when UNRWA will resume deliveries. Aid deferred on Friday.
Gazans receive only 10% of their daily food needs. Shipping from Egyptaccording to the United Nations, large parts of the population have been evacuated due to water system outages. drink contaminated water, causing disease outbreaks. According to the United Nations’ World Food Programme, almost the entire population is in need of food, with dehydration and malnutrition on the rise.
In Jerusalem, thousands of marchers took part, including family members and some supporters. 240 hostages held in Gaza By Hamas — arrived on the final leg on Saturday 5 days trekking From Tel Aviv, he criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his handling of the war and implored his government to take further action. bring your loved one home.
Gathering about war It was again held in several cities around the world.
air strikes continue
Israel gave a signal Plan to expand attack to the southMost of Gaza’s population is currently evacuated, including hundreds of thousands of people who followed Israel’s call to evacuate Gaza City and the north ahead of a ground offensive.
People continued to move south. Some of them recovered the bodies of strangers along the way. “We found young men in the car. The car was destroyed,” said Moemen Abu Elban, a man on the trip. The body was placed in a horse-drawn carriage and covered with a blanket. “Frankly, it’s difficult. There’s total destruction.”
Elsewhere, the Israeli military said its aircraft had struck an alleged militant hideout in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. Palestine Red Crescent emergency services said five Palestinians had died.
The death toll brings the number of Palestinians killed in violence in the West Bank since the start of the war to 212, making it the deadliest period in the region since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s. .
___
Mrou reported from Beirut and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Carla Anna in New York contributed to this report.
___
Full coverage of AP is https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
