Video - Inferno! Israeli airstrike on displaced camp in Al-Aqsa Hospital kills 4, burns dozens

Yasmine Osama Farag , Monday 14 Oct 2024

An Israeli airstrike on Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four Palestinians and sent flames sweeping through a packed tent camp for displaced people, leaving dozens with severe burns, according to Palestinian medics.

Gaza
A Palestinian boy sits as people check the destruction following an Israeli army strike around tents for displaced people inside the walls of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on October 14, 2024. AFP

 

Medical sources confirmed that four people, including a woman and a child, were killed and about 70 others were injured after Israeli jets bombed a tented camp housing displaced Palestinians inside the grounds of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza, according to media reports.

The Israeli strike sparked a massive fire that spread across roughly 30 tents, Al Jazeera reported.

According to witnesses, the blaze spread rapidly due to the tents being made of highly flammable nylon and fabric.

They said the fire raged for 45 minutes before civil defence crews managed to bring it under control.

The bodies of the deceased were completely charred, while most of the injured suffered second and third-degree burns, medics told Anadolu news agency.

The Government Media Office in Gaza confirmed that "this is the seventh Israeli strike targeting displaced people’s tents within the grounds of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital since the beginning of the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip more than a year ago."

The hospital was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded people from an earlier strike on a nearby school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat refugee camp that killed 22 people, including 15 children, when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.

Associated Press (AP) footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.

Twenty-five people were transferred to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to hospital staff.

High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the EU, Josep Borrell  condemned the Israeli strikes. "Dozens of civilians seeking safety were killed and injured in dreadful circumstances," he said on X.

"Mass evacuation orders, violations of IHL (nternational humanitarian law) disregard for civilian casualties will not make Israelis safer," he added.

Targeting polio vaccination 
 

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said the Israeli airstrike on Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital set tents on fire while displaced people were sleeping, marking yet 'another night of terror' for Gaza's residents.

UNRWA also confirmed that the school which was hit by the Israeli airstrike in Nuseirat had been scheduled to serve as a vaccination site for polio on Monday.

 

A plan to empty northern Gaza
 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza, a plan that, if implemented, could trap without food or water hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes, according to an AP report.

Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, estimated at around 400,000 people, to evacuate to the south and has not allowed any food to enter the north since the start of the month, according to the UN.  

The plan proposed to Netanyahu and the Israeli parliament by a group of retired generals would escalate the pressure, giving Palestinians a week to leave the northern third of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, before declaring it a closed military zone.

Those who remain would be considered combatants — meaning military regulations would allow troops to kill them — and denied food, water, medicine, and fuel, according to a copy of the plan given to the AP by its chief architect.

The plan calls for Israel to maintain control over the north for an indefinite period to attempt to create a new administration without Hamas, splitting the Gaza Strip in two.

There has been no decision by the government to carry out the so-called “Generals’ Plan” fully, and it is unclear how strongly it is being considered.

One official knowing the matter told AP that parts of the plan are already being implemented, without specifying which parts.

Human rights groups say the plan would likely starve civilians and that it flies in the face of international law, which prohibits using food as a weapon and forcible transfers. 

So far, very few Palestinians have heeded the latest evacuation order. Some are older, sick, or afraid to leave their homes, but many fear there is nowhere safe to go and that they will never be allowed back. Israel has prevented those who fled earlier in the war from returning.

“All Gazans are afraid of the plan,” Jomana Elkhalili, a 26-year-old Palestinian aid worker for Oxfam living in Gaza City with her family, told AP.

“Still, they will not flee. They will not make the mistake again ... We know the place there is not safe,” she said, referring to southern Gaza, where most of the population is huddled in dismal tent camps and airstrikes often hit shelters.

“That’s why people in the north say it’s better to die than to leave,” she added.

Complete blockade on Jabalia 
 

The Spokesperson for Gaza's Civil Defence Mahmud Bassal told Al Jazeera that the Israeli occupation forces are targeting "anything that moves" and have imposed a complete blockade on the Jabalia area in northern Gaza.

He added that Israeli forces have fired artillery shells at Palestinians, and emergency teams are unable to reach the wounded due to the ongoing attacks.

On Sunday, the Government Media Office in Gaza said Israeli forces have committed massacres in northern Gaza governorates, killing more than 300 people over the past nine days.

Director of the Government Media Office in Gaza Ismail Thawebta warned that Israel aims to carry out a mass displacement from north Gaza, calling it the "largest and most dangerous US-Israeli plan of the 21st century."

He noted that Israeli forces are blocking fuel supplies from reaching hospitals in northern Gaza, further endangering lives, according to the statement.

Israeli occupation forces widened their raid into northern Gaza, with tanks advancing deeper into the north edge of Gaza City, Reuters reported on Sunday.

Residents said Israeli forces have effectively isolated Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya in the far north of the territory from Gaza City.

Access between the two areas is now blocked except upon their permission for families willing to leave the three towns, heeding evacuation orders, according to Reuters.

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