DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza — A wave of Israeli strikes throughout Gaza on Sunday hit a hospital, a municipal constructing, a house and a car, killing a minimum of 21 folks, together with youngsters, as Israel vowed to develop its safety presence within the small coastal strip.
A predawn strike on Al-Ahli Hospital, in Gaza Metropolis, was the newest of a number of assaults on the final main hospital offering crucial well being care in northern Gaza.
Hospital director Dr. Fadel Naim stated the emergency room, pharmacy and surrounding buildings have been severely broken, affecting over 100 sufferers and dozens of employees. He stated in a publish on X that they’d been warned upfront.
One affected person, a woman, died in the course of the evacuation as a result of employees have been unable to supply pressing care, Gaza’s Well being Ministry stated. Israel stated it struck a Hamas command and management middle on the hospital, with out offering proof. Hamas denied the allegations.
Al-Ahli Hospital is run by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, which condemned the assault, saying in an announcement it occurred on “Palm Sunday, the start of the Holy Week, the most sacred week of the Christian year.”
Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and worshipers in Gaza Metropolis marked it in a church whose gilded trim and intact partitions have been a distinction to the widespread particles elsewhere.
Related Press video confirmed the hospital’s caved-in roof surrounded by rubble. The well being ministry’s director normal, Dr. Munir al-Boursh, stated sufferers had been carried exterior in beds and slept within the streets.
“Nothing was left safe inside the hospital, or all over Gaza,” stated Mohammad Abu Nasser, an injured man who sat on his mattress open air and appeared on the destruction.
The well being ministry stated the hospital was quickly out of service and sufferers have been transferred to different hospitals in Gaza Metropolis. The group Medical Support for Palestinians known as it the fifth assault on the hospital because the battle started.
Hospitals have particular safety underneath worldwide regulation. Israel has besieged and raided them, some a number of instances, and struck a number of ones whereas accusing Hamas of utilizing them as cowl for its fighters.
Final month, Israel struck Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the most important in southern Gaza, killing two folks and inflicting a big fireplace, the well being ministry stated. The ability had been overwhelmed with useless and wounded when Israel ended a two-month ceasefire final month with a shock wave of airstrikes.
Hours later, a strike on a automobile in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza killed a minimum of seven folks together with six brothers, in line with employees at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which acquired the our bodies. The youngest brother was 10.
Their father, Ibrahim Abu Mahadi, stated his sons labored for a charity that distributes meals to Palestinians. “For what sin were they killed?” he stated.
AP reporters noticed the mangled, bloodied automobile as family wept over the our bodies.
An airstrike Sunday afternoon hit a home within the city Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, killing a minimum of seven folks together with two girls, in line with the Indonesian hospital, which acquired the our bodies. A pregnant girl was rescued from the rubble.
“We don’t know whose body is this and whose body is that,” stated a neighbor, Abdallah Dardouna. “There is no resistance, there is no Qassam, no Hamas, there is no one here. It’s only civilians here.”
