Mohammed Dahman Associated Press Palestinians evacuate an injured man after an Israeli strike on the Khan Yunis refugee camp on November 13.
Adel Zaanoun – Agence France-Presse and Sarah Benhaida – Agence France-Presse respectively in the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem
06:52 a.m.
- Middle East
Thousands of civilians are still stuck Tuesday in the main hospital in Gaza City, at the heart of the fighting between Israel and Hamas, deprived of water and electricity and where around 180 bodies were buried in a mass grave, according to its director.
Several thousand Palestinians, patients, staff and civilians displaced by the war that has raged since October 7, are crowding the site of al-Chifa hospital, a huge complex housing, according to Israel, infrastructure of the Islamist movement buried in a network of tunnels.
“The situation is very serious, it’s inhumane,” warned Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on X (formerly Twitter).
< p>At least “179 bodies” were buried Tuesday in a “mass grave” dug in the al-Chifa hospital complex, its director announced to AFP, specifying that among them were seven premature babies who died due to lack of care. electricity to keep them alive.
“We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” said Doctor Mohammed Abou Salmiya. “There are bodies littering the aisles of the hospital complex and the refrigerated rooms of the morgues are no longer supplied” with electricity, he added.
A journalist collaborating with AFP at the Inside the hospital said the smell of decomposing bodies was overpowering.
Israeli tanks were massed on Tuesday at the gates of al-Chifa, while fighting and airstrikes in the surrounding areas continued throughout the night, he added, although less intense than in previous nights.
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A female hostage soldier killed
Israel has been relentlessly striking the Gaza Strip since the attack launched on its soil against civilians by Hamas commandos on October 7, and has been carrying out a ground operation since October 27 with the aim of “wiping out” the Islamist movement, in power in the besieged Palestinian territory.
On the Israeli side, around 1,200 people were killed, according to the authorities, the vast majority of them civilians killed on the day of the attack, of unprecedented scale and violence since the creation of Israel in 1948.
The Israeli army announced Tuesday that 46 soldiers had been killed since the start of the war.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli bombings have killed a total of 11,240 people, mostly civilians, including 4,630 children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
The Israeli military estimates that some 240 people were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip during the Hamas attack. She announced on Tuesday the death of Noa Marciano, a 19-year-old soldier held hostage by Hamas, the day after the Islamist movement published a photo presenting her as “killed by an Israeli bombing”.
Hamas accuses Israel of “procrastinating” in discussions, via mediation from Qatar, regarding the possible release of dozens of hostages in exchange for a truce.
Relatives of hostages have planned a march on Tuesday from Tel Aviv to the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, in order to put pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to favor their release.
On Monday, the spokesperson for the Israeli army Daniel Hagari claimed that soldiers “found signs” of the presence of hostages held by Hamas, in a video filmed in a basement at Al-Rantissi Children's Hospital in Gaza.
< p>He showed images of a baby bottle and a piece of clothing near a chair, as well as assault rifles, grenades and what he described as “explosive belts.”
“People are going to die”
The Hamas government said on Monday that all hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip, where the most violent fighting is concentrated , were “out of service”, due to lack of electricity and fuel.
US President Joe Biden called on Israel, of which the United States is a key ally, to exercise restraint, saying the al-Chifa hospital must “be protected.”
The UN does not stops demanding the sending of fuel to Gaza, in particular to power generators in hospitals.
The territory has been subjected since October 9 by Israel to a complete siege which deprives its population of water, electricity, food and medicine. But Israel refuses to let in fuel, saying it could be used by Hamas for its military activities.
“We have no electricity, food or water in the hospital,” al-Chifa said, an MSF doctor said. “People will die in a few hours without working artificial respirators,” he added.
The Israeli army, which accuses the Islamist movement of using the sick and displaced as “shields humans,” said it was not targeting the hospital. She reported “efforts” to transfer incubators from an Israeli hospital to al-Chifa.
“The idea is to try to evacuate people, to evacuate as many as possible,” army spokesman Peter Lerner said on Monday night.
According to him, “a few hundred” people are inside the hospital, while according to the Deputy Minister of Health of the Hamas government, Youssef Abou Rich, present in the hospital, around 20,000 displaced would have found refuge there.
“Control of Gaza”
On Tuesday, the Hamas government claimed that “more than a hundred” people had been killed since the day before in Israeli bombings, one of which left 30 dead, according to this source, in the Indonesian hospital in Jabaliya, a huge camp. refugees from the north of the Gaza Strip.
Hamas has “lost control in Gaza” and its fighters are “fleeing towards the south” of the territory, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav said on Monday Gallant. According to the UN, around 1.6 million of the territory's 2.4 million people have been displaced by the war.
In recent days, tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the north of the Gaza Strip, transformed into a field of ruins, towards the south after Israel opened evacuation “corridors”.
In the south of the territory, hundreds of thousands of displaced people are massed near the border with Egypt, in disastrous humanitarian conditions.
International aid is arriving slowly from Egypt, but in quantity very insufficient according to the UN.
At the border between Israel and Lebanon, new exchanges of fire took place during the night from Monday to Tuesday between the Israeli army and armed groups in Lebanon, including the powerful pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which supports Hamas.
In the West Bank, five Palestinians were killed according to a hospital source, during nighttime clashes with Israeli forces in the Tulkarem sector, in the north of this Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, plagued by an upsurge in violence on the sidelines of the war in Gaza.