Health officers and other people trapped inside Gaza’s largest hospital rejected Israel’s claims that it was serving to infants and others evacuate on November 12, saying combating continued simply exterior the ability the place incubators lay idle with no electrical energy and demanding provides have been operating out.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed pressing requires a cease-fire until it consists of the discharge of all of the almost 240 hostages captured by Hamas within the Oct. 7 rampage that triggered the conflict.
A day after Mr. Netanyahu stated Israel was bringing its “full force” to finish Hamas’ 16-year rule in Gaza, residents reported heavy airstrikes and shelling, together with round Shifa Hospital. Israel, with out offering proof, has accused Hamas of concealing a command publish inside and beneath the compound, allegations denied by Hamas and hospital employees.
“They are exterior, not removed from the gates,” said Ahmed al-Boursh, a resident sheltering there.
The hospital’s last generator ran out of fuel Saturday, leading to the deaths of three premature babies and four other patients, according to the Health Ministry. It said another 36 babies are at risk of dying.
Israel’s military asserted it placed 300 liters (79 gallons) of fuel near Shifa overnight for an emergency generator powering incubators for premature babies and coordinated the delivery with hospital officials. But the military said Hamas prevented the hospital from receiving the fuel.
A Health Ministry spokesperson, Ashraf al-Qidra, disputed the account and also told Al Jazeera the fuel would not be enough to operate the generator an hour. “This is a mockery towards the patients and children,” Al-Qidra said.
Speaking to CNN, Mr. Netanyahu asserted that “100 or so” people had been evacuated from Shifa and that Israel had created safe corridors.
But Health Ministry Undersecretary Munir al-Boursh said Israeli snipers have deployed around Shifa, firing at any movement.
“There are wounded in the house, and we can’t reach them,” he advised Al Jazeera. “We can’t stick our heads out of the window.”
The navy stated troops would help in shifting infants on Sunday. But Medical Aid for Palestinians, a U.Ok.-based charity that has supported Shifa’s neonatal intensive care unit, stated transferring critically unwell infants is advanced. “With ambulances unable to achieve the hospital … and no hospital with capability to obtain them, there is no such thing as a indication of how this may be achieved safely,” CEO Melanie Ward said.
The only option is for Israel to stop its assault and allow fuel into the hospital, Ward said.
The Health Ministry said there are 1,500 patients at Shifa, along with 1,500 medical personnel and between 15,000 and 20,000 people seeking shelter.
The president of Doctors Without Borders International, Christos Christou, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” it would take weeks to evacuate the patients.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on the X social media platform that Shifa has been without water for three days and “is not functioning as a hospital anymore.” Several humanitarian groups told The Associated Press they weren’t able to reach the hospital on November 12.
The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said another Gaza City hospital, Al-Quds, is “no longer operational” because it was out of fuel with 6,000 people trapped there. Gaza’s sole power plant shut down a month ago, and Israel has barred fuel imports to prevent Hamas from using them.
One woman fleeing northern Gaza, Fedaa Shangan, said she’d had a cesarean section at Al-Quds: “The wound is still fresh.” She said the Israeli army near the hospital “didn’t care concerning the presence of sufferers, youngsters, girls and the aged. They didn’t care about anybody.”
Alarm was rising. “We do not want to see a firefight in a hospital where innocent people, helpless people, people seeking medical care are caught in the crossfire,” President Joe Biden’s nationwide safety adviser, Jake Sullivan, advised ABC’s “This Week.”
“Decisive international action is needed now to secure an immediate humanitarian cease-fire” amid attacks on health care, the U.N. regional directors of the World Health Organization and others said in a statement, adding that more than half of Gaza’s hospitals are closed.
Muhammed Zaqout, director of hospitals in Gaza, said the Health Ministry has been unable to update the death toll since Friday as medics are unable to reach areas hit by Israeli bombardment.
About 2.3 million Palestinians remain in the besieged territory.
Mr. Netanyahu has said the responsibility for any harm to civilians lies with Hamas. Israel has long accused the group, which operates in dense residential neighborhoods, of using civilians as human shields.
The U.S. has pushed for temporary pauses that would allow for wider distribution of badly needed aid to civilians in the territory, where conditions are increasingly dire.
But Israel has only agreed to brief daily periods during which civilians can flee ground combat in northern Gaza and head south on foot along two main roads. Israel continues to strike what it says are militant targets across southern Gaza, often killing women and children.
Hospital officials said at least 13 were killed after an Israeli airstrike in the southern town of Khan Younis.
The war has displaced over two-thirds of Gaza’s population.
Wael Abu Omar, spokesperson for Gaza’s border crossings, said 846 people left Gaza to Egypt through the Rafah crossing Sunday. Nearly all were foreigners while a few were patients from Gaza’s hospitals and their caretakers.
He said 76 aid trucks entered Gaza. The U.N. and partners have said much more were needed daily.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on X that he asked European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to apply the same “legal, moral grounds” for EU assist of Ukraine to “define its stand on Israel’s war crimes.”
More than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them girls and minors, have been killed for the reason that conflict started, in keeping with the Health Ministry in Gaza, which doesn’t differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. About 2,700 folks have been reported lacking.
At least 1,200 folks have been killed on the Israeli aspect, largely civilians killed within the preliminary Hamas assault. Forty-six Israeli troopers have been killed in Gaza for the reason that floor offensive started.
About 250,000 Israelis have evacuate d from communities close to Gaza, the place Palestinian militants are nonetheless firing barrages of rockets, and alongside the northern border with Lebanon.
Mr. Netanyahu has begun to stipulate Israel’s postwar plans for Gaza, which distinction sharply with the imaginative and prescient of the United States.
He stated Gaza can be demilitarized and Israel would retain the flexibility to enter Gaza freely to seek out militants. He rejected the concept that the Palestinian Authority, which administers elements of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would at some stage management Gaza.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated the U.S. opposes an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and envisions a unified Palestinian authorities in Gaza and the West Bank as a step towards a Palestinian state, lengthy opposed by Netanyahu’s authorities.
The conflict threatens to set off a wider battle, with Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon buying and selling fireplace alongside the border. Attacks by Hezbollah on November 12 wounded seven Israeli troops and 10 others, Israel’s navy and rescue providers stated.
Source: www.thehindu.com
