Hamas says Israel launched deadly strike on Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital
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Gaza’s traumatised population has been on the move since the start of the war, sheltering in hospitals or trudging from the north to the south.
PHOTO: AFP
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GAZA/JERUSALEM – Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said on Nov 20 that Israeli forces had struck the Indonesian Hospital and killed at least 12 people, including patients, in the north of the war-torn Palestinian territory.
Dozens more were wounded, and around 700 people remained trapped inside the “besieged” medical centre, said Mr Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for the ministry. Israel did not immediately comment.
Gaza braced itself for a further expansion of Israeli military operations on Nov 20, even as cautious hopes grew for a deal to release hostages
The Israeli army said it was taking its fight against Hamas militants to “additional neighbourhoods” of the Gaza Strip, where an aerial and ground offensive has already killed at least 13,000 people, including thousands of children, according to the Hamas-run government.
Like many other medical facilities in Gaza, the hospital, which was set up in 2016 with funding from Indonesian organisations, has ceased operations
At the other end of Gaza, at least 14 Palestinians were killed in two Israeli air strikes on houses in the town of Rafah, near the border with Egypt.
A first group of prematurely born babies evacuated from Gaza’s biggest hospital was taken to Egypt for treatment on Nov 20. More than two dozens babies were expected to cross, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent and Egypt’s Al Qahera TV.
The newborns had been in north Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, where several other babies died amid a collapse in medical services partly caused by power cuts when fuel ran out.
The Israeli military issued a statement with a video of air strikes and troops going house to house, saying it killed three Hamas company commanders and a squad of fighters, without giving specific locations.
Amid continued fighting between Hamas militants and Israeli forces pressing an offensive, United States and Israeli officials said a deal to free some of the hostages held in the Palestinian enclave was edging closer.
About 240 hostages were taken during a deadly cross-border rampage into Israel by Hamas militants on Oct 7,
Israeli tanks and troops stormed into Gaza late in October
But Hamas and local witnesses say militants are waging guerilla-style warfare in pockets of the congested, urbanised north, including parts of Gaza City and the sprawling Jabalia and Beach refugee camps.
The armed wing of militant group Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, said its fighters attacked seven Israeli military vehicles during clashes in the northern areas of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and Al-Saftawi, and west of Jabalia.
Hopeful for a deal
Israel’s Ambassador to the US Michael Herzog said in an interview on ABC’s This Week that Israel was hopeful that a significant number of hostages could be released by Hamas “in coming days”.
On Nov 19, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told reporters in Doha that the main obstacles to a deal were now “very minor”, with mainly “practical and logistical” issues remaining.
A White House official said the “very complicated, very sensitive” negotiations were making progress. They coincided with Israel preparing to expand its offensive against Hamas to Gaza’s southern half, signalled by increasing air strikes on targets it sees as lairs of armed militants.
The US on Nov 19 cautioned Israel against embarking on combat operations in the south until military planners had taken into account the safety of Palestinian civilians.
Gaza’s traumatised population has been on the move since the start of the war, sheltering in hospitals or trudging from the north to the south and, in some cases, back again, in desperate efforts to stay out of the line of fire.
Palestinians fleeing the fighting in war-torn Gaza walk along Salaheddine Road in the Zeitoun district.
PHOTO: AFP
The civilian death toll in Gaza
Witnesses reported bouts of heavy fighting between Hamas gunmen and Israeli forces trying to advance into Jabalia, home to some 100,000 people and, according to Israel, a significant militant stronghold.
Repeated Israeli bombardment of Jabalia – an urban extension of Gaza City that grew out of a camp for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war – has killed scores of civilians, Palestinian medics say.
Israel’s military on Nov 19, via social media in Arabic, urged residents of several Jabalia neighbourhoods to evacuate south “to preserve your safety” and, to that end, said it would pause military action from 10am to 2pm.
After the “pause” expired, 11 Palestinians in Jabalia were killed by an Israeli air strike on a house, the enclave’s Health Ministry said.
Palestinians say Israel’s repeated bombardment of southern Gaza renders its promises of safety absurd.
Justifying bloody toll
Six weeks into the war, Israel is facing intense international pressure to justify the bloody toll.
Israeli officials have warned that a “window of legitimacy” for the war to rout Hamas may be closing.
On Nov 19, it presented what it said was evidence that Hamas gunmen used Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, to hide foreign hostages and mask underground tunnels
The hospital has been a focal point of global concern after Israeli forces launched a raid on the facility last week, with the World Health Organisation calling it “a death zone”.
Israel has repeatedly claimed that Al-Shifa Hospital and the tunnels beneath it double as a base for Palestinian militants, a charge Hamas and hospital administrators deny.
A photo handout showing what the Israeli army says is the entrance of a tunnel under Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital.
PHOTO: AFP
The Israeli military released what was said to be closed-circuit television footage from Oct 7 of two male hostages, from Nepal and Thailand, being taken into the hospital.
“We have not yet located both of these hostages,” army spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters.
One clip showed a man in shorts and a pale blue shirt being dragged into an entrance hall by five men, at least three of whom were armed. In a second clip, an injured man in underwear is wheeled in on a gurney by armed men as several others wearing blue hospital scrubs look on. REUTERS, AFP
