Head of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza Strip released – DW – 01.07.2024

The Israeli military called on Palestinians to leave parts of Khan Younis and Rafah after reports that dozens of rockets were fired at southern Israel from the same region.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees had already left southern Gaza before Israel’s widely condemned operations in Rafah. More than a million people had sought refuge in the border town after Israel’s offensive in the rest of the enclave.

The evacuation order was issued via social media and in an official statement.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman Stephane Dujarric said: “This shows once again that no place is safe in Gaza. Greater efforts must be made to protect civilians.”

“It is another stop in this deadly cycle of movement that the population of the Gaza Strip has to go through on a regular basis,” he said.

According to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled area, more than 37,900 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip since October 7.

In a statement, the ministry said that at least 23 people had been killed in the past 24 hours and 87,060 people had been injured since the start of the latest conflict.

The ministry makes no distinction between civilians and combatants, but the UN and numerous humanitarian organizations consider the casualty figures to be largely reliable.

About half of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants are children. According to the United Nations, the majority of those killed are women and children.

Israel launched its Gaza operation after Hamas carried out terrorist attacks in southern Israel on October 7.

The Israeli military said Palestinian militants fired about “20 missiles” from the central Gaza Strip.

“About 20 shells were identified that came from the Khan Yunis area,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement.

The Israeli military said some of the objects were intercepted, while others landed in areas of southern Israel near the Gaza Strip without causing any casualties.

According to a statement quoted by the news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), the militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

Israel has released the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, after more than seven months in detention.

Abu Salmiya was released along with dozens of other Palestinian prisoners. The AP news agency quoted a Palestinian health official as saying that a total of 55 prisoners had been released.

Al-Shifa was the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, but is no longer in operation because it was largely destroyed during the Israeli offensive on Palestinian territory.

Far-right Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir criticized the release of Abu Salmiya and other imprisoned Palestinians in a post on X (formerly Twitter), calling it “security neglect.”

Abu Salmiya and other Palestinian prisoners said they were tortured by Israeli security forces.

Israel accuses the militant Islamist Hamas, which it classifies as a terrorist organization, of using medical facilities such as al-Shifa as a cover for military operations.

The Israeli military said on Sunday that 18 of its soldiers were injured, one seriously, when a drone attacked their position in the occupied Golan Heights near the border with Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that the attack had already taken place on Sunday. The IDF had attacked Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon with air strikes and artillery fire.

Since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October, the Lebanese, Iran-backed militia Hezbollah and Israel have been trading cross-border shelling attacks.

But fighting there has intensified recently and the US, Germany and Turkey are urging caution.

The US and Germany warned of the consequences of escalating the war, while Turkey expressed its solidarity with Lebanon and called on other actors in the region to follow suit.

The US military said it had destroyed three Houthi unmanned surface vessels in the Red Sea within 24 hours.

“The USVs were determined to pose an imminent threat to U.S. and coalition forces and to merchant vessels in the region,” U.S. Central Command said in a post on X.

“This continued malicious and reckless behavior by the Iran-backed Houthis threatens regional stability and endangers the lives of sailors in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden,” the post said.

How powerful is Iran really?

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday that he would work to defeat the Hamas militias in the Gaza Strip.

“We are determined to fight until we achieve all our goals: the elimination of Hamas, the release of all our hostages, ensuring that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel, and the safe return of our residents to their homes in the south and the north,” he said.

He added that “dozens of terrorists are eliminated every day.”

The conflict in the Gaza Strip, which was triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, has so far claimed 38,000 lives in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry.

“Hamas is the only obstacle to the release of our hostages,” Netanyahu added at the meeting. Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by many governments, including the United States, Israel and others.

On Sunday, Israeli forces advanced into Shejaiya, a neighborhood of Gaza city in the north, and pushed deeper into western and central Rafah in the south.

mk/rm (AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa)