2023-10-18 08:19:05
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Doctors in Gaza City working with dwindling supplies performed surgeries on hospital floors, often without anesthesia, in a desperate attempt to save the seriously injured from a massive explosion. which killed hundreds of Palestinians sheltering in another nearby hospital, while the Israeli bombing and siege of the territory continued.
The armed group Hamas attributed the explosion to an Israeli airstrike, while the Israeli army attributed it to a failed rocket by other Palestinian militants. At least 500 people died, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
Outrage over the hospital massacre spread across the Middle East as US President Joe Biden landed in Israel in hopes of preventing the spread of the war, which began when Hamas militants attacked cities and towns in southern Israel. last week.
Biden was originally scheduled to also visit Jordan, but his meetings with Arab leaders were canceled as he left Washington, taking away an opportunity for face-to-face talks that he considers crucial at a delicate time.
The Jordanian Foreign Minister, who announced the cancellation of the meeting with Biden, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Egyptian President Abdul Fatah El Sisi, said that the war is “taking the region to the limit,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on state television.
Israel continued airstrikes on Gaza on Wednesday, according to the Gaza Ministry of the Interior.
Tuesday night’s explosion at Al Ahli hospital left shocking scenes. Hundreds of Palestinians had taken refuge in Al Ahli and other hospitals in Gaza City in the hope that they would be saved from shelling following Israel ordered all residents of the city and its surroundings to evacuate to the south of the territory.
Videos that The Associated Press confirmed came from the hospital showed the center’s grounds strewn with bodies, many of them young children, as flames engulfed the building. The grass around them was littered with blankets, backpacks, and other belongings. On Wednesday morning, the place was dotted with charred cars and the black remains of the fire covered the ground.
Ambulances and private vehicles took regarding 350 victims to the city’s main hospital, Al Shifa, which was already overwhelmed by wounded from other attacks, said its director, Mohammed Abu Selmia.
The victims arrived with horrific injuries, according to Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra. Some were decapitated, disemboweled or missing limbs.
Doctors at the overwhelmed hospital resorted to operating on the floor and in hallways, mostly without anesthesia.
“We need equipment, medicine, beds, anesthesia, we need everything,” Abu Selmia said. He warned that fuel for the hospital’s generators would run out within hours, forcing operations to be suspended entirely, if supplies did not arrive in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the United States was trying to convince Israel to allow the delivery of supplies to desperate civilians, humanitarian groups and hospitals in the tiny Gaza Strip, which has been under a complete blockade since last week’s bloody Hamas attack. Hundreds of thousands of increasingly desperate people tried to get water and bread.
Hamas called Tuesday’s explosion at the hospital a “horrible massacre,” and claimed it was caused by an Israeli attack.
The Israeli military blamed Islamic Jihad, a smaller, more radical Palestinian militant group that often collaborates with Hamas. The military said Islamic Jihad fighters had fired a barrage of rockets near the hospital and that “information from multiple sources” indicated the group was responsible.
The military concluded that there were no air, ground or navy attacks in the area at the time of the explosion, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman for the military, said at a news conference. The radar detected outgoing rocket fire at the same time and intercepted communications between militant groups indicating that Islamic Jihad had launched the rockets.
Hagari also said aerial images taken by a military drone showed an explosion that he described as inconsistent with Israeli weaponry. The explosion occurred in the building’s parking lot, he said. The death toll might not be confirmed, he added.
The military said in a statement that since the start of the war, some 450 rockets fired at Israel by militant groups have landed in Gaza, “endangering and damaging the lives of Gaza residents.”
Islamic Jihad rejected those claims and accused Israel of “trying to evade responsibility for the brutal massacre it committed.”
The group cited Israel’s order to evacuate Al Ahli and reports of a previous attack on the hospital complex as evidence that the hospital was an Israeli target. He also claimed that the magnitude of the explosion, the angle of fall of the bomb and the extent of the destruction pointed to Israel.
Before the deaths at Al Ahli hospital, there were at least 2,778 dead and 9,700 injured from Israeli strikes, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Nearly two-thirds of the dead were children, a ministry official said. Another 1,200 people are believed to be buried under rubble, dead or alive, in various parts of Gaza, according to health authorities.
In the October 7 attack in southern Israel, Hamas fighters killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took regarding 200 hostage. Hamas fighters have launched rockets from Gaza every day since then, targeting cities across Israel.
Protests broke out across the Middle East. In Amman, a palace statement said Jordan’s king condemned “the massacre perpetrated by Israel once morest innocent civilians.”
The king “warned that this war, which has entered a dangerous phase, will plunge the region into an atrocious disaster,” the statement said.
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Kullab reported from Baghdad. Nessman reported from Jerusalem. Lee reported from Amman. Associated Press journalists Colleen Long in Washington, Amy Teibel in Jerusalem; Abby Sewell in Beirut; Samy Magdy and Jack Jeffrey in Cairo; and Ashraf Sweilam in el-Arish, Egypt, contributed to this report.
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