Israel continues hospital attacks as forces claim ‘advance’
Israel continues hospital attacks as forces claim ‘advance’
GAZA:
The Palestinian Red Crescent said displaced people were injured "due to intense gunfire from the Israeli drones targeting citizens at Al-Amal Hospital" as well as the rescue agency's base. The military said it was checking the report.
Nearby in the same city, Israeli tanks were also approaching Gaza's biggest remaining functioning hospital, Nasser, where people reported hearing shellfire from the west. Residents also reported fierce gun battles to the south.
Israel has launched a major new advance in Khan Younis this week to capture the city, which it says is now the primary base of Hamas fighters.
The Gaza health ministry said 142 Palestinians had been killed and 278 injured in Gaza in the past 24 hours, taking the death toll from more than three months of war there to 24,762.
The World Health Organization says most of the enclave's 36 hospitals have stopped working. Only 15 are partially functioning and those are operating at up to three times their capacity, without adequate fuel or medical supplies, it says.
Israeli officials have accused Hamas fighters of operating from hospitals, including Nasser, which staff deny. Israel has so far been unable to provide any substantial proof legtimising its claim.
More than 1.7 million people - around 75% of Gaza's population - are estimated to be displaced, many forced to move repeatedly, according to UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) figures. Many have sought refuge in tents that do little to protect them from the elements and disease.
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, shelter at a tent camp, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, January 18, 2024. PHOTO: REUTERS
Among them, Mohammed al-Ghandour wanted to give his bride a beautiful wedding but they had to flee their homes in Gaza City and the couple finally got married this week in a tent city in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, where they now live.
"My happiness is maybe at 3% but will get myself ready for my wife. I want to make her happy," Ghandour said.
While saying he was not shying away from the "human tragedy" inflicted on Gaza civilians, Israeli President Isaac Herzog cast the offensive as a step towards more peaceful relations with the Palestinians in the future, and bolstering global security, during his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
In the north, where Israel says it has started pulling out troops and shifting to smaller scale operations, 12 people were killed in Israeli strikes on a residential building near the largely non-functioning Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
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