War between Israel and Hamas: Israeli bombing of Gaza City forces closure of medical facilities

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Heavy Israeli bombardments rocked Gaza city on Tuesday, forcing thousands of Palestinians to flee and close medical facilities. in the latest offensive in the north of the territory.

Israel’s new ground attack on Gaza’s largest city is the country’s latest attempt to crack down on the regrouping of Hamas fighters in areas that the army says had previously been largely cleared.

After nine months of fighting, large parts of Gaza city and the surrounding urban areas have been razed to the ground or left behind a devastated landscape. A large part of the population fled during the warbut several hundred thousand Palestinians remain in the north.

“The fighting was fierce,” said Hakeem Abdel-Bar, who fled Gaza’s Tuffah neighborhood to stay with relatives in another neighborhood. He said Israeli warplanes and drones “attacked everything that moved” and tanks had advanced into central districts.

There was no immediate information on the number of victims. Families whose relatives were injured or trapped called for ambulances, but rescue workers were unable to reach most of the affected districts due to Israeli operations, said Nebal Farsakh, a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent.

“It’s a dangerous zone,” she said.

After Israel called for evacuation on Monday In the eastern and central parts of Gaza City, staff at two hospitals – Al-Ahli and Patients Friends Association Hospital – rushed to transfer patients and closed their operations, the United Nations said. Farsakh said all three medical facilities run by the Red Crescent in Gaza City had been closed.

Numerous patients were taken to the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, which itself Scene of heavy fighting earlier in the war. “We don’t know where to go. There is no treatment and nothing essential to life,” said Mohammad Abu Naser, who was treated there. “We are slowly dying.”

The Israeli military said on Tuesday it had informed hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza City that they did not need to be evacuated. But hospitals in Gaza have often closed and transferred patients at any sign of possible Israeli military action, fearing raids.

Over the past nine months, Israeli forces have occupied at least eight hospitals, resulting in the deaths of patients and medical staff and causing massive destruction of facilities and equipment. Israel claims Hamas is using the hospitals for military purposes, but has provided limited evidence.

According to the United Nations humanitarian office, only 13 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are functioning, and even then only partially.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza, triggered by the October 7 Hamas attack, has killed or wounded more than 5% of the territory’s 2.3 million Palestinians, according to the Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry. Almost the entire population has been driven from their homes. Many have been displaced multiple times. Hundreds of thousands have been crammed together in scorching hot tent camps.

The United Nations humanitarian office said the exodus from Gaza had been “dangerously chaotic,” with people being ordered to flee through neighborhoods where fighting was taking place.

“People were seen fleeing in several directions, not knowing which route was the safest,” the agency said in a statement. The UN’s largest bakery in the city had to close and the fighting had blocked aid organizations’ access to warehouses.

Maha Mahfouz, a mother of two, said she had fled twice in the past 24 hours. First, she rushed from her home in Gaza City to a relative’s house in another neighborhood. When things became dangerous there, she fled on Monday evening to Shati, a decades-old refugee camp that has grown into a district where Israel has carried out repeated raids.

She described the enormous destruction in the target areas of the recent attacks. “The buildings are destroyed. The streets are destroyed. Everything is in ruins,” she said.

Israeli air strikes on the central city of Deir al-Balah and nearby refugee camps killed at least 14 people on Tuesday, including four children and a woman, officials at al-Aqsa Martyrs and al-Awda hospitals, where the victims were taken, said.

One of the attacks hit a police station in an open-air market in Nuseirat refugee camp, killing four people and injuring two dozen, half of them women and children. At a hospital, a young boy cried, coughed and wiped his eyes as paramedics treated him on the crowded floor.

The Israeli military has said it has intelligence showing that fighters from Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group are regrouping in central Gaza. Israel accuses Hamas and other fighters of hiding among civilians. In Shijaiyah, a Gaza district where fighting has been taking place for weeks, the military says it has destroyed six kilometers of Hamas tunnels.

Hamas warned that the recent attacks on Gaza City could lead to the failure of negotiations on a ceasefire and the release of the hostages.

Israel and Hamas seemed close the gaps of the last few dayswith the USA, Egypt and Qatar mediating.

CIA Director William Burns met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss the negotiations, el-Sissi’s office said. Further talks were scheduled to take place on Wednesday in Qatar, where Hamas maintains a political office.

But obstacles remain, even after Hamas backed away from its central demand that Israel commit to ending the war as part of any agreement. Hamas still demands that mediators guarantee that the negotiations end with a permanent ceasefire.

Israel has rejected any agreement that would force it to end the war with Hamas. Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday of putting “further obstacles in the way of negotiations,” including operations in Gaza City.

According to Israeli authorities, 1,200 people were killed in a cross-border raid by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, most of them civilians. The militants took around 250 people hostage. Around 120 of them are still in captivity, and around a third are said to be dead.

Israel’s bombings and offensives in the Gaza Strip have killed more than 38,200 people and injured more than 88,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

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Magdy reported from Cairo.

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