The search for safety across the besieged Gaza Strip has grown desperate as Israel intensified its assault on the territory’s largest city.
More than 100,000 Palestinians have fled south over the past two days, according to Israel, but they still face bombardment and dire conditions. Reported strikes on or near at least four hospitals in northern Gaza overnight underscored the danger for tens of thousands more who had crowded into the facilities, believing they would be safe.
Battles around Hospitals
Early Friday, at least three strikes over several hours hit the courtyard and the obstetrics department of Shifa Hospital, according to Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesperson at the Health Ministry in Gaza.
A video of the courtyard recorded the sound of incoming fire waking people in makeshift shelters, followed by shouts for an ambulance. In the blood-spattered courtyard, one man writhed, screaming on the ground, his leg apparently severed.
For weeks, tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians, reaching as many as 60,000 this week according to the Health Ministry, have been sheltering in the Shifa complex.
The overnight strikes triggered a mass exodus of the displaced. At about 10 a.m., large numbers packed up their belongings and began walking toward the south, five people who were among those who left told The Associated Press.
Al-Qidra told the Qatar-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera that more than 30,000 displaced people, medical workers and patients remain in the hospital.
Mainly those who could not walk or did not know where to go remained, said Wafaa abu Hajajj, a journalist who arrived in the south after leaving the hospital Friday.
“The strikes were hoping to scare people and it worked. … It became too much,” said 32-year-old Haneen Abu Awda, who had been at Shifa being treated for wounds from an earlier strike on his house.
At the same time, Shifa has been overwhelmed by thousands of wounded, even as it operates with minimal power and medical supplies.
In a seven minutes video released Friday by the Health Ministry, bodies of limp children are seen on stretchers across blood-stained floors in the hospital, some dead, some barely breathing. Other patients were strewn around the floor, unable to be treated for lack of supplies. One man is seen gasping for air.
The director of Shifa, Mohammed Abu Selmia, said Israel demanded the facility be evacuated, but he said there was nowhere for such a large number of patients to go.
“Where are we going to evacuate them?” he said, speaking to Al Jazeera television.
The Health Ministry said one person had been killed at Shifa and several were wounded. Another Israeli strike near the Nasr Medical Center killed two people, according to the ministry. Abu Selmia said at least 25 people were killed when a strike hit a Gaza City school where people were sheltered inside.
The strike on Nasr forced the shutdown of its children’s hospital, the only remaining specialized pediatric care in north Gaza, said World Health Organization spokesperson Margaret Harris. She said it was not known what happened to patients there, including children receiving dialysis and on life support — “things that you cannot possibly evacuate them safely with.”
Military spokesman Richard Hecht said Israel is “aware of the sensitivity” of hospitals and that forces were closing in on them slowly. Israel “does not fire on hospitals,” he claimed, but if militants are seen firing from them “we will do what we need to do” and kill them.
Israel has produced a video that it says is evidence that Hamas uses not only hospitals, as cover for military activities. Other investigastions have proofed wrong Israel's allegations. One investigation by Al Jazeera found no evidence to support the Israeli claim, which is further supported by the video footage produced by the news outlet, discrediting Israel's assertions.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has pointed to international humanitarian law, which states that the protection of civilians and hospitals, schools, and homes is paramount.
A child is killed on average every 10 minutes in the Gaza Strip, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the United Nations Security Council on Friday, warning: "Nowhere and no one is safe."
He said that half of Gaza's 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary healthcare centers were not functioning and those that were operating were way beyond their capacities, describing the healthcare system as being "on its knees."
Civilians flee South
Tens of thousands of new evacuees from the north, some from Shifa, flowed down Salah al-Din road, the central spine running the length of the Gaza Strip, and reached the central city of Deir al-Balah on Friday. With no fuel for vehicles, the crowds walked for hours as explosions echoed a short distance away. Among them were wounded and older people.
They arrived hungry, exhausted and with a stew of emotions: relief, rage, and despair.
Reem Asant, 50, described seeing bodies on the streets as he and others made their way out of Gaza City, trying to avoid shelling.
“We’re talking about children killed in a hospital,” shouted one man, Abu Yousef. “Hundreds of women killed every day. Houses collapsing on the heads of civilians. … Where are human rights? Where is the United Nations? Where is the United States? Where is the International Criminal Court? Where is the entire world?”
The Israeli military announced an expanded six-hour window Friday for civilians to escape northern Gaza along Salah al-Din, the route used since last weekend. It also announced the opening of a second route, along the coastal road, after an agreement announced by the White House a day earlier.
More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes since the war began. Israel estimates that more than 850,000 of the 1.1 million people in northern Gaza have left, according to military spokesman Jonathan Conricus.
Rising Death Tolls
More than 11,070 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Another 2,650 people have been reported missing.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that “far too many” Palestinians have died and suffered. While recent Israeli steps to try to minimize civilian harm are positive, he said, they are not enough.
Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf told U.S. lawmakers this week that it was “very possible” the death toll was even higher than the Gaza Health Ministry's tally.
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