Hospital attack in Gaza claimed hundreds of lives

Israel has refuted claims that it committed a “war crime,” as described by the Red Crescent.

After a missile targeted the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, more than 900 people have been reported injured and more than 600 reported killed. There were hundreds of Palestinians taking refuge in the structure, along with medical patients, and there are worries that the death toll would rise. Israel, which is now bombing Gaza in response to a violent assault by Hamas, has denied being behind the attack and has accused the Palestinian Islamic Jihad of carrying it out.

On Tuesday, a spokesman of the Palestinian Red Crescent labelled the devastation of the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City a massacre and a war crime. A local physician agreed.

Genocide has occurred. Nebal Farsakh of the Red Crescent told Al Jazeera that this was a war crime. She said that after Israel ordered everyone to evacuate the north of Gaza, numerous Palestinian civilians, in addition to the patients inside, had sought refuge on the hospital’s grounds.

“Those who lived in front of the hospital were compelled by the evacuation order to evacuate their residences. Even an evacuation to the south is beyond their means. Speaking from Ramallah in the West Bank, she claimed that the infrastructure and transit had been totally destroyed.

“What happened is terrible because all of those people were civilians,” said the speaker. They ran away from their homes and found refuge at a hospital, which is, by international law, a safe location, Ziad Shehadah, a physician in Gaza, told AJ. “People moved to our schools and hospitals in order to feel safe after leaving their houses because they believed they were more hazardous. And in only one minute, a hospital saw the deaths of all of them.

Shehadah claimed that the eventual death toll might well surpass 1,000.

It’s a carnage, he continued.

The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, a branch of the Anglican Church, oversees Al-Ahli Hospital. The World Health Organisation, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey were among those who condemned its destruction.

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Israel, meanwhile, has denied attacking the hospital. “An enemy rocket barrage was carried towards Israel,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari stated, “which passed through the area of the hospital when it was hit.”

The terrorist group Islamic Jihad is accountable for the attempted gunshot that struck the hospital, according to intelligence information that we have obtained from a number of sources, Hagari continued. Shortly after, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the same assertion.

Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas, argued that Israel’s “brutality” on October 7 demonstrated the group’s “defeat” and claimed that the US was ultimately to blame.

According to Haniyeh, “the US is accountable for the hospital attack due to the cover it provides for Israeli aggression.” He also urged West Bank Palestinians to rebel against Israel.

Immediately after Haniyeh’s remarks, hundreds of Palestinians rioted in Ramallah to protest President Mahmoud Abbas’ intention to meet with US President Joe Biden on Wednesday. Since then, Abbas is said to have scrapped such intentions, citing the hospital attack.

Numerous demonstrators tried to enter the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, but police dispersed them.

On Wednesday, the UN Security Council will meet in extraordinary session to address the attack on the Gaza hospital, which was requested by Russia and the United Arab Emirates.