On Monday, Israeli soldiers arrived at the gates of Gaza City’s central hospital, with the principal goal of their assault being to capture control of the northern half of the Gaza Strip. According to medical personnel, patients, including newborns, were dying due to a lack of fuel at the hospital, which Israeli forces had approached.
There was also increased anxiety that the war may move beyond Gaza since there has been an increase in skirmishes on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon and the United States has launched air attacks on Iran-linked militia targets in neighboring Syria. These developments have fueled the fear that the conflict will go further.
After a series of attacks carried out by Hamas militants throughout southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of civilians, Israel started its campaign a month ago to eradicate Hamas, the terrorist group that controls the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government estimates that over 1,200 people were killed and 240 more were hauled into Gaza as hostages on the single worst day in its entire 75-year existence.
Since then, an unrelenting Israeli military assault has caused the deaths of thousands of Gazans and the displacement of more than half of the population, leaving them without a home. Israel has issued a directive that calls for the complete evacuation of the northern part of the Gaza Strip. The medical authorities in Gaza report that more than 11,000 individuals have been verified dead, with around 40 percent of the victims being minors.
Late in October, Israeli ground forces entered Gaza, and they have since swiftly ringed Gaza City, which is the most important settlement in the north. Since then, the fighting has been centered in an ever-shrinking circle around the Shifa hospital, which is the largest in the enclave and where hundreds of residents have taken refuge.
Israel claims that Hamas fighters have an underground headquarters in tunnels beneath the hospital and are purposefully exploiting the hospital’s patients as a shield; Hamas, on the other hand, disputes these claims. Ashraf Al-Qidra, a spokesperson for the Gaza Health Ministry who was located inside the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, said that an Israeli tank had been positioned outside the facility’s entrance.
“The tank is outside the gate of the outpatient clinic department, and this is how the situation looks this morning,” Qidra told Reuters by phone. “This is how the situation looks this morning.”
Israel has issued orders for people and medical personnel to evacuate the area and take patients elsewhere. It says it tried to evacuate newborns from the neo-natal department and left 300 liters of gasoline to power emergency generators at the entrance of the hospital, but Hamas prevented them from doing so. Additionally, it says it offered to leave fuel for the emergency generators at the hospital’s entrance.
The spokeswoman for the Gaza Health Ministry, Qidra, claimed that the ministry had turned down the offers of gasoline but stated that the 300 liters would only be enough to operate the facility for half an hour. According to what he told Reuters, Shifa requires between 8,000 and 10,000 liters of gasoline every day, which must come from the Red Cross or another international humanitarian organization.
One Israeli official, who spoke anonymously, stated that 300 liters may last for several hours because the hospital is now just running its emergency room, reducing its fuel requirement.
According to the health ministry in Gaza, as of Sunday, three of the 45 newborns who were being cared for in incubators at Shifa had passed away. There was not a recent update available from Qidra. A surgeon at the hospital named Dr. Ahmed El Mokhallalati stated on Sunday that the bombing had caused the staff to be compelled to line up preterm babies on ordinary beds and use what little electricity was available to warm them.
“We expect to lose more of them daily,” the president stated. In a post on X, the World Health Organization director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that Al Shifa was “not functioning as a hospital anymore.”
“Tragically, the number of patient fatalities has increased significantly,” added the physician. “The world cannot stand silent while hospitals, which should be safe havens, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, and despair.”
A WORLD THAT IS POLARIZED
The confrontation, which has lasted for over a month, has divided opinion worldwide. Many nations have stated that even the appalling cruelty of the bombings carried out by Hamas does not justify an Israeli reaction that has murdered so many people in a congested region that is under siege.
Israel maintains that it has no choice but to wipe out Hamas and places the blame for any harm caused to civilians on Hamas fighters who conceal themselves among the population. It has refused pleas for a ceasefire, which it claims would prolong the suffering by providing Hamas an opportunity to regroup. Washington, which claims to be pressuring its ally to protect civilians but has made it clear that it is supporting the Israeli government’s position, is in favor of this.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS News that the United States does not want to see firefights in hospitals where innocent people, patients seeking medical attention, are caught in the crossfire. “We’ve had active consultations with the Israeli Defense Forces on this,” Sullivan said. “We do not want to see firefights in hospitals.”
Despite Israel’s request for all civilians in the area to evacuate, it is thought that hundreds of thousands of people are still present in the northern portion of Gaza, where the combat is taking place. In addition, Israel has been consistently bombing the south of Gaza, leaving the people of Gaza with nowhere to go that is safe.
The order to evacuate the north amounted to a decision “whether to stay in your home, where your memories are and where you were born, and go to nowhere or be bombed,” said Ahmed, 42, who could be contacted by phone in the Jabalia refugee camp located in northern Gaza.
“Most of the residents in Jabalia did not flee, and they have no intention of doing so. According to him, Israel does not distinguish between the north and the south. In the southern region of Khan Younis, Israeli aircraft dropped bombs on many homes. Seven individuals were reportedly murdered, and numerous more were injured in a single attack, according to health officials.
Individuals in private vehicles transported injured patients, including children, to the emergency room of Nasser Hospital.
One of the guys said, “We need ambulances; there are dead bodies under the rubble,” which was a cry for help. Concerns about the potential for the conflict to escalate into a wider war have been voiced. Other Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria have conducted at least 40 different drone and rocket assaults against U.S. soldiers. Hezbollah, a group based in Lebanon that, like Hamas, receives support from Iran, is responsible for these attacks. Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in a missile exchange.
According to Reuters, a U.S. defense official, the United States carried out two air strikes in Syria on Iran-aligned militants on Sunday. The United States carried out these strikes, which appeared to be the latest response to the assaults. Iran has expressed support for the Hamas attacks on Israel, although it denies any involvement in the attacks themselves.
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