2023-11-19 13:50:00
Photo: AFP.
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced this Sunday that it was working on an evacuation plan for the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the target of Israeli Army raids against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, and described the place as a “death zone.” “.
The statement came Saturday night after a visit by the WHO and other UN officials to the hospital, which Israeli troops besieged earlier this week despite the presence of hundreds of doctors, patients and Palestinians displaced by the attacks. combats.
A day earlier, the Hamas Health Ministry announced the deaths of more than 80 people in two Israeli bombings of a UN-run refugee camp in Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip, devastated by fighting between Israel and Hamas. .
The first bombing, against a school, left 50 dead, and the second hit a home, where it killed 32 people from the same family, according to Hamas authorities, in power in Gaza since 2007.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) expressed outrage at a “horrendous” attack. “These attacks (…) must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer,” the head of the organization, Philippe Lazzarini, wrote on the X network.
In the second bombing, which hit a house in the same refugee camp32 members of the same family diedincluding 19 children, said the Hamas Health Ministry, which released a list of names.
The Israeli military said it was analyzing reports of “an incident in the Jabaliya region.”
Photo: AFP.
During the night, another Israeli bombardment hit Khan Yunis, killing at least 26 people, according to the director of the Nasser hospital in that southern Gaza Strip city.
Hamas militants killed 1,200 people on October 7 on Israeli soil, most of them civilians, and kidnapped, along with other armed groups, some 240 people, including twenty Argentines, according to Israeli authorities.
Since then, Israeli retaliatory bombings in the Gaza Strip have been incessant and killed, according to a balance sheet by the Hamas Ministry of Health, to 12,300 Palestinian civilians, including 5,000 children.
Gaza’s largest hospital, Al Shifa, has been a flashpoint in recent days as Israeli forces accuse Hamas of using the medical facility as a command center, something the Palestinian group and health workers have denied.
On Sunday, the U.N. health agency, WHO, said an assessment team visited the hospital, which it called a “death zone” with a massive cemetery at the entrance and about 300 patients and 25 staff still inside. .
“WHO and its partners are urgently developing plans for the immediate evacuation of remaining patients, staff and their families,” the organization said in a statement, AFP news agency reported.
The WHO anticipated that they will organize several missions in the coming days to urgently evacuate patients remaining destined for the Nasser hospital and the European hospital in Gaza, although “they are already operating above their capacities.”
A day earlier, hundreds of people evacuated Al Shifa, where there were at that time more than 2,000 patients, doctors and people displaced by the war.
According to Hamas, 24 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals have stopped functioning.
And, according to the UN, more than two-thirds of the Strip’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced by the war. Most fled to the south with the bare minimum and are surviving the coming cold.
At the request of the United States, Israel on Friday authorized the daily entry through Rafah of two fuel tankers.
According to the authority of the Palestinian part of the border crossing, these first 17,000 liters will allow the electrical generators of hospitals and telecommunications networks to be reactivated.
Tensions are also high in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967, where some 200 Palestinians have been killed by settlers and Israeli soldiers since October 7, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The White House stated Saturday night that it continues to “work hard” to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas to free the hostages and mark a pause in the fighting.
US President Joe Biden said last night that Gaza and the West Bank should be “reunified” under a “strengthened” Palestinian Authority, and supported “a two-state solution”, referring to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also facing pressure from the relatives of those kidnapped by Hamas, who are demanding an agreement that would allow them to be released.
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