RAFAH, Gaza Strip—Palestinians fleeing an ongoing Israeli raid on Gaza’s main hospital described mass arrests and forced marches in front of dead bodies on Sunday, while the United Nations said Israel is now blocking its main enterprise that helps Palestinians send food aid to Gaza.
The Israeli military says it killed more than 170 militants and arrested about 480 suspects in the raid on Shifa Hospital that began on Monday, calling it a blow to Hamas and other armed teams that it said had regrouped there as the war neared six months.
The fighting highlights the resilience of Palestinian armed teams in a heavily destroyed part of Gaza, where Israeli troops were forced to return after a raid in the early weeks of the war.
Kareem Ayman Hathat, who lived in a five-story building about 100 metres from the hospital, said he huddled in the kitchen for days as explosions rocked the building.
On Saturday morning, Israeli troops stormed the building and forced dozens of citizens to leave. He said the men were forced to strip naked and four were arrested. The others were blindfolded and ordered to head a tank south as explosions rumbled around them.
“Every once in a while, the tank would fire a shell,” he told The Associated Press. “To terrify us. “
On Sunday, Israeli warplanes made several moves near the Shifa hospital, which largely ceased to function after the November attack. After claiming that Hamas maintained an elaborate command center there, Israeli forces discovered a single tunnel leading to some underground rooms a few months ago. .
Virtually no aid has been delivered in recent weeks to northern Gaza and Gaza City, where Shifa is located. The isolated domain was badly damaged at the start of the Israeli offensive introduced after the Hamas attack on October 7 that sparked the war.
Since Sunday, Israel has told the U. N. Enterprise for Palestinian Refugees that it will no longer approve the company’s food convoys to northern Gaza, UNRWA leader Philippe Lazzarini reported on social media.
“This is outrageous and shows that it is intentional to prevent life-saving aid in a man-made famine,” he said. The agency, the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, has been continuously accused across Israel of having ties to Hamas. The Israeli government did not respond without delay.
According to experts, famine is imminent in northern Gaza, where more than 210,000 people are suffering from catastrophic famine.
A day after some 7,000 trucks of humanitarian aid waited to enter Gaza and called the famine a “moral scandal,” U. N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for an early humanitarian ceasefire, the release of hostages held in Gaza and Israel’s withdrawal. barriers” to allow help to enter.
“If we look at Gaza, it almost seems as if the four horsemen of war, famine, conquest and death are galloping there,” Guterres said in Egypt, adding that there is no justification for collective punishment of Palestinians.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said five wounded Palestinians, trapped in Shifa hospital, died for lack of food, water or medical services. The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called the situations “totally inhumane. “
Jameel al-Ayoubi, among the thousands of people who sought refuge in Shifa at the start of the ongoing incursion, said tanks and armored bulldozers entered the hospital’s courtyard, crushing ambulances and civilian vehicles. He saw tanks crushing at least four cuerpos. de other people killed in the attack.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had evacuated patients and doctors from the Shifa emergency section because militants had “taken refuge” there, and that it had set up a place of choice for seriously wounded patients.
Abed Radwan, who lived about 200 meters from the hospital, said Israeli forces stormed all the buildings in the neighborhood, arrested several more people and forced others to walk south. He saw dead bodies in the streets and several houses razed to the ground.
“They didn’t leave anything untouched,” he said.
The Israeli military also stormed Al Amal and Nasser hospitals in the southern city of Khan Younis on Sunday morning, amid “very intense shelling,” the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said. The IDF announced operations in Khan Younis targeting Hamas infrastructure, but said it has not been working in hospitals lately. He accuses Hamas of using hospitals as shields.
The war has killed at least 32,226 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The death toll distinguishes between civilians and combatants, but says women and young people account for about two-thirds of the dead.
Among the latest people killed were at least seven other people, as well as three children, when an Israeli airstrike hit an area in Rafah overnight, according to health officials. And an airstrike near Deir al-Balah on Sunday night killed at least 10 people. of a family, as well as two children, according to an AP reporter who saw the bodies at a hospital.
Israel claims to have killed more than 13,000 militants, without offering evidence. He blames Hamas for civilian casualties, blaming himself in residential areas.
More than 80 percent of Gaza’s 2. 3 million citizens have fled their homes, seeking safe haven in the southern city of Rafah, which Israel sees as the next target of its parliamentary offensive. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects calls from the United States and other countries. to a primary operation there, calling it essential to defeat Hamas.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said he would travel to the United States on Sunday at the invitation of Washington, in a bid to demonstrate “our ability to unload aerial systems and munitions” for the war and critical ties with Israel’s main ally.
The October 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took many hostages. Hamas is still holding about 100 hostages and the remains of 30 others. Most of the others were released in exchange for the release of some Palestinian prisoners in November.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt will negotiate a new ceasefire and liberation.
On Sunday, across the border from Gaza, Jews celebrated their holiday of ultimate joy, Purim, the biblical account of how a plot to exterminate Jews in Persia failed, as a confirmation of Jewish survival.
Unimaginable conditions
Aid teams visiting an overcrowded hospital in Gaza described an “unimaginable” scenario in which giant open wounds were being treated.
An emergency medical team of three humanitarian teams spent two weeks performing surgeries and other care at Gaza’s European Hospital near Khan Younis. The southern city has been the scene of fierce fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants since the beginning of the year.
In a statement on Monday, the team said medical staff had been forced to evacuate or had been unable to access the hospital. He said Israeli restrictions had led to a shortage of medical supplies, adding critical pieces such as gauze, plates and screws used to stabilize fractures.
Visiting surgeons “reported giant swollen open wounds in patients and had to administer emergency nutrition to patients as lack of food jeopardized patients’ treatment. “
International aid officials say the entire population of the Gaza Strip (another 2. 3 million people) is food insecure and famine is imminent in the worst-hit north.
Samy Magdy reported from Cairo.
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