An Israeli air strike on the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in the besieged Gaza city has martyred at least 500 people in the deadliest single incident since Israel launched an unrelenting bombing campaign in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas cross-border attack.
The inhumane attack on the hospital pushed the Palestinian death toll from the Israeli relentless attack beyond 3,000.
Victims mostly Women and Children
Al Jazeera’s Safwat Kahlout, reporting from Gaza, said most of the victims of the attack on the hospital were women and children, citing the enclave’s health officials.
He said that death toll was expected to rise as many bodies remained unidentified.
“In Gaza, at least five hospitals received warnings from Israel to evacuate. According to international law, hospitals are meant to be safe and off-limits to attacks. In Gaza, this principle is not upheld.” Kahlout said.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday said he was horrified after the deaths of hundreds of people in a strike on a hospital in Gaza while Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar demanded that Israel be held accountable for its “war crimes“.
The Palestinians Authority’s health minister, Mai Alkaila, accused Israel of “a massacre” at Al-Ahli Al-Arabi hospital. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed “barbaric terrorists” in Gaza had attacked the hospital, not Israel’s military.
According to the Turkish aNews, a Netanyahu aide, Hananya Naftali, had initially made a social media post attributing the hospital blast to the Israeli Air Force. He, however, swiftly deleted it and made another post blaming Hamas. Other journalists pointed it out as well.
Reacting to the strike on the hospital, Guterres said, “I am horrified by the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in a strike on a hospital in Gaza today, which I strongly condemn.
“My heart is with the families of the victims. Hospitals and medical personnel are protected under international humanitarian law,” he said in a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
In another tweet, he called for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Middle East to ease the epic human suffering”.
“Too many lives — and the fate of the entire region — hang in the balance,” Guterres said.
Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani said that the “heinous attack” by Israel was not an act of self-defence. “It violates international humanitarian law and targeted innocent children, women, doctors, medical personnel, and displaced civilians seeking shelter,” he said.
Islamic Jihad says Israel army accusation over Gaza hospital strike is ‘lies’
Palestinian group Islamic Jihad on Wednesday described as “lies” the Israel army’s accusations that it was responsible for the strike on the hospital.
The Israeli military had earlier denied responsibility for the strike at the hospital, suggesting it was hit by a failed rocket inside Gaza.
Later, it said that the strike was a rocket misfired by Islamic Jihad Palestinian movement. “The hospital was hit as a result of a failed rocket launched by the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization,” it said in a statement.
According to the Israeli army, “intelligence from multiple sources we have … indicates that Islamic Jihad is responsible for the failed rocket launch which hit the hospital in Gaza.”
Spokesman Daniel Hagari told a press briefing that at the time of the strike, the Israeli army was not conducting air operations near the hospital and the rockets that hit the building did not match theirs.
“The Zionist enemy is trying hard to evade its responsibility for the brutal massacre he committed by bombing the Baptist Arab National Hospital in Gaza through his usual fabrication of lies, and through pointing the finger of blame at the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine,” the Islamic Jihad said in a statement Wednesday.
“We therefore affirm that the accusations put forward by the enemy are false and baseless,” it added.
According to the statement, the hospital had been ordered to evacuate by Israel under threat of bombardment, and it was a bomb dropped by an Israeli army plane that caused the tragedy.
It said the hospital had “received public notice made global of evacuation under threat of bombing”.
Gaza hospital blast also sparks angry demonstrations across Middle East
Mass protests also broke out in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and the West Bank after an explosion at Al-Ahli Al-Arabi hospital left hundreds dead.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah called for a “day of rage” to coincide with US president Joe Biden’s arrival to the region.
Following Hezbollah’s call, hundreds of demonstrators scuffled with Lebanese security forces outside the US embassy in the suburb of Awkar, outside Beirut, where protesters hurled stones and set a nearby building on fire, Agence France-Presse reported.
Police fired several rounds of teargas to disperse protesters, while medics treated people affected by the teargas. AFP reported the protesters chanted “death to America” and “death to Israel”. Hundreds also gathered at the French embassy in Beirut, raising Hezbollah flags and also hurling stones which piled up at the embassy’s main entrance.
Several thousand people also gathered in Palestine Square in central Tehran to voice their anger, according to an AFP photographer.
Author: Maria Sarfraz
(@mariaa.sarfraz)
