Fears grow for patients, staff in Gaza hospital
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Israel said it had taken into custody 100 people at one of Gaza’s main hospitals after troops raided the medical facility, with fears mounting on Saturday for patients and staff trapped inside.
The deadly bombardment of the Gaza Strip continued overnight, with another 100 people killed in Israeli strikes, the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry said.
At least 120 patients and five medical teams are stuck without water, food and electricity in the Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Younis, it added.
Israel has for weeks concentrated its military operations in Khan Younis, the hometown of Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, the alleged architect of the October 7 attacks that triggered the war.
This week, intense fighting has raged around the hospital — one of the territory’s last remaining major medical facilities that remain even partly operational.
The power was cut and the generators had stopped after the raid, leading to the deaths of six patients due to a lack of oxygen, the ministry said.
“Newborn children are at a risk of dying in the next few hours,” it warned on Saturday.
Israel’s army said its troops entered the hospital on Thursday, acting on what it called “credible intelligence” that hostages seized in the October 7 attacks had been held there and that the bodies of some might still be inside.
It also said it had detained 100 people from the hospital for suspected “terrorist activity.”
The army added that it had seized weapons and retrieved “medications with the names of Israeli hostages”in the hospital.
But the raid has been criticized by medics and the United Nations. The army has insisted it has made every effort to keep the hospital supplied with power, including bringing in an alternative generator.
A witness, who declined to be named for safety reasons, told AFP the Israeli forces had shot “at anyone who moved inside the hospital.”
‘Pattern of attacks’
World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic slammed the operation Friday, saying “more degradation to the hospital means more lives being lost.”
“Patients, health workers and civilians who are seeking refuge in hospitals deserve safety and not a burial in those places of healing,” he added.
Doctors Without Borders said its medics had been forced to flee and leave patients behind, with one employee unaccounted for and another detained by Israeli forces.
Roughly 130 hostages are still believed to be in Gaza after the October 7 attacks, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Dozens of the estimated 250 people taken hostage during the attacks were freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners during a weeklong truce in November. Israel says 30 of those still in Gaza are presumed dead.
At least 28,775 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza, the Health Ministry said.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals for military purposes, which the Palestinian Islamist group has denied.
The UN Human Rights Office said Israel’s raid on the Nasser hospital appeared to be “part of a pattern of attacks by Israeli forces striking essential lifesaving civilian infrastructure in Gaza, especially hospitals.”
Witnesses said explosions were heard at dawn in the southernmost Gazan city of Rafah, where about 1.4 million displaced civilians are trapped after taking refuge in a makeshift encampment by the Egyptian border with dwindling supplies.
“They are killing us slowly,” said displaced Palestinian Mohammad Yaghi. “We are dying slowly due to the scarcity of resources and the lack of medications and treatments.”
US President Joe Biden has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to carry out an offensive on Rafah without a plan to keep civilians safe. But the premier has insisted he will push ahead with a “powerful” operation there to achieve “complete victory” over Hamas.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Friday that the Jewish state would coordinate with Egypt before launching its operation so as to “not hurt the Egyptian interests.”
Hamas’ armed wing has warned that hostages held in Gaza are “struggling to stay alive” as conditions deteriorate due to relentless Israeli bombardments.