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jabalia refugee camp
Gaza Ministry Says 50 Killed in a Day as Israel Bombs Flour Line, Hospital, and Refugee Camps
"We demand international protection for hospitals, patients, and medical staff," said the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Dec 09, 2024
The death toll from Israel's 14-month assault on the Gaza Strip hit at least 44,758 on Monday, with 50 people killed in the past 24 hours alone, as Israeli forces bombed refugee camps, a flour distribution line, and a hospital, according to reporters and officials in the Palestinian enclave.
The Gaza Ministry of Health said a bombing at the Indonesian Hospital north of Gaza City wounded six patients—who are now among more than 106,000 Palestinians injured since Israel began its retaliation for last year's Hamas-led attack.
"We demand international protection for hospitals, patients, and medical staff," the ministry said in a statement reported by The Associated Press—which noted that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed Sunday evening it was unaware of any attack on the hospital "in the last three to four hours."
A nurse shared footage from the hospital with Drop Site News, which circulated the material on social media:
According toAl Jazeera, "Overnight, an Israeli attack in the southern city of Rafah also killed 10 people while they had lined up to buy flour."
Israel, which faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice, has been accused of starving Gaza's 2.3 million residents by refusing to allow enough humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.
Reporting from central Deir al-Balah, Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud said that at least three people were killed in a Monday morning attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in the north that Israeli bombing and the ongoing blockade have "turned into a graveyard."
The victims "were trying to leave their home in search of food in the vicinity of their neighborhood when they were targeted by a drone," the journalist said. "They were killed right away. Their bodies are still in the street and nobody has the ability to get to the bombed site and remove the bodies from the street."
The IDF announced that three soldiers were killed and 12 others were wounded Monday in fighting in Jabalia.
Mahmoud, the journalist, also said Monday that bodies were piling up outside al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after an Israeli bombing at the Bureij refugee camp.
"The agony keeps on unfolding here at al-Aqsa Hospital, where survivors and relatives showed up early this morning to collect the bodies from the morgue of the hospital," he said. "At some point, the morgue of the hospital was packed with the bodies and there was not enough room for more bodies."
Citing the Palestinian news agency Wafa, Middle East Eyereported that "two children lost their lives, and others were injured on Monday, during Israeli shelling of al-Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip."
The updates followed a Hamas delegation led by Khalil al-Hayya leaving Cairo Sunday evening after meeting with Egypt's general intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Hassan Rashad, to discuss a potential cease-fire in Gaza.
Israeli media reported Sunday that unnamed political sources claimed Hamas and Israel are close to reaching a "small" deal that would involve a two-month cease-fire; the release of prisoners who are elderly, women, wounded, and sick; and the IDF's withdrawal from parts of Gaza.
Neither Hamas nor mediators Egypt and Qatar have commented on the reporting—which came over a week into an Israeli cease-fire with the Lebanese group Hezbollah that Israel has repeatedly violated since it took effect late last month.
In neighboring Syria, the government of President Bashar al-Assad collapsed over the weekend as he fled and rebels took control of the capital. Israel seized more of the country's Golan Heights, which it has illegally occupied for decades, and the United States—which arms the IDF—launched airstrikes on over 75 Islamic State targets in Syria.
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Many Children Among Hundreds Killed, Wounded in Latest Israeli Bombings of Gaza
"Our ambulances can't transfer wounded people," said one overwhelmed hospital director. "Those who can arrive by themselves to the hospital receive care, but those who don't just die in the streets."
Oct 24, 2024
A devastating wave of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Thursday have killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians, including many children, according to local and international media reports.
Citing Gaza Civil Defense officials, Palestine's Quds News Networkreported Thursday that at least 150 Palestinian civilians were killed or wounded by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombardment of around a dozen apartment towers on Al-Houja Street in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
Local and international media outlets earlier reported at least 17 Palestinians were killed and dozens more wounded by an IDF strike on the al-Shuhada school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Medical staff at the al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat—where many people killed and wounded in the strike were taken—told Al Jazeera that 13 children under age 18 and three women were among the dead.
The IDF said the strike targeted a Hamas command-and-control center. However, survivors and eyewitnesses said that all of the dead were women and children.
Gaza Notificationspublished the names of 16 people killed in the attack, including at least five children—the youngest of whom was a baby, just 11 months old.
The outlet said a total of 203 Palestinian civilians have been killed so far on Thursday, and that "all medical and rescue operations have been completely halted by the military administration."
"The Israeli army has warned that ambulances and rescue teams will be directly targeted if they attempt to continue their operations, effectively blocking any humanitarian efforts," the site added.
Gaza's Government Media Office reported 34 Palestinians including 11 children were burned alive in an IDF strike on a youth club-turned shelter in the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.
Israeli forces have also reportedly attacked hospitals and healthcare workers throughout Gaza. The Palestine Chronicle reported that IDF troops opened fire on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, "with sick children inside."
Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital's director, toldAl Jazeera that IDF tanks surrounded the facility and "directly targeted" it, severely damaging the intensive care unit. On Wednesday, Abu Safia said there were more than 150 wounded people in the hospital, including 14 children in the ICU or neonatal ward.
"There is a very large number of wounded people, and we lose at least one person every hour because of the lack of medical supplies and medical staff," he said. "Our ambulances can't transfer wounded people. Those who can arrive by themselves to the hospital receive care, but those who don't just die in the streets."
The Palestinian Ministry of Health also said several of its employees were wounded by Israeli artillery strikes on Thursday.
Earlier this month, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report detailing how "Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities."
Israel's ongoing offensive in northern and central Gaza has killed or wounded more than 2,000 Palestinians this month alone, according to Gaza officials. Since last October, Israel's war on Gaza—which is the subject of a South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice—has left more than 153,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing; millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened; and most of the coastal enclave in ruins.
Thursday's strikes came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the Middle East, where he is set to take part in cease-fire negotiations with officials from Israel, Egypt, and Qatar in the Qatari capital Doha.
"Going back to the negotiations on ceasefire and the hostages, one of the things we're doing is looking at whether there are different options that we can pursue to get us to a conclusion, to get us to a result," Blinken said Thursday.
The United States is Israel's primary international backer, providing billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover including multiple vetoes of United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions.
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'Devastating Blow to Humanity': Barred From Gaza by Israel, Health Workers Cry Out for Help
As the situation inside Gaza is increasingly described as "indescribable," medical NGOs blocked from providing care to Palestinians trapped inside besieged territory demand world leaders to stop turning 'blind eye' to Israeli war crimes and violations of humanitarian law.
Oct 19, 2024
As more Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed dozens of people Saturday, health workers from both inside and out of the besieged territory are again pleading with world leaders to bring an end to the indiscriminate attacks and imposed humanitarian crisis that witnesses on the ground increasingly say there are no words to describe.
At al Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis and elsewhere in Gaza, doctors and other medical staff on Saturday staged protests and held press conferences to call attention to the ongoing attacks in northern areas, including the latest targeting of Jabalia in which reporting indicated anywhere from 33 to over 50 people—including civilian men, women, and children—were killed.
"The world is watching, and history will judge us by how we respond to this grave injustice. I call upon each and everyone one of you to join this fight for the preservation of our shared humanity." —Dr. Khaled Saleh, FAJR Scientific
Al-Jazeera reports that hospitals, which have repeatedly been bombed by Israel over the last year, were not immune from this latest round:
Three partially functioning hospitals treating severely wounded patients and sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza are now out of service after coming under intense Israeli fire, a Gaza health official told Al Jazeera, as the siege on Jabalia enters its third week, with at least 33 more people killed in the northern area.
Israeli forces bombed al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia early on Saturday, and have also shelled Kamal Adwan and the Indonesian hospitals in Beit Lahiya over the past few hours, Al Jazeera correspondents have reported.
Saturday's attacks come days after Israel barred at least six medical service NGOs from continuing their life-saving work in Gaza. According to the Washington Post:
Two of those medical NGOs, Glia and the Palestinian American Medical Association (PAMA), confirmed to The Washington Post that they were notified by the WHO this week about the bans. Both groups have worked in Gaza for years preceding the war.
"WHO is concerned about the impact of these denials on Gaza's strained healthcare system," the organization said Thursday in a statement. It added that international emergency medical teams (EMTs) deployed to Gaza are essential to keeping the system operational, as only 17 of the enclave's 36 hospitals remain functionaland "healthcare needs far exceed the system's capacity."
Dr. Khaled Saleh, chair of FAJR Scientific, which provides surgical expertise and trauma specialists to war-torn regions and was another of the groups notified by the WHO that it had been barred from entering Gaza, said in a statement that the move by the Israeli government filled him with "deep sadness and concern for the current state of our global family, questioning our shared humanity and ethics."
Blocked from providing aid to people in dire need, Saleh called on people worldwide to push for an end to Israel's blocking of vital medical aid and those seeking to provide it.
"This is a devastating blow to humanity, representing a level of destruction that we have not witnessed since World War II, yet our world leaders turn a blind eye," he said.
"As a member of the global community," Saleh continued, "I implore all of you who value compassion, ethics, and the sanctity of human life to stand with us and raise your voices against this unconscionable decision. Together, we must advocate for the voiceless and demand restoration of the fundamental right to access to medical care."
Israel's ban on the medical NGOs comes after a string of healthcare professionals who spent time in the Gaza strip have gone public with what they witnessed on the ground, telling tales of unspeakable horror and trying to shake the world out of its complacency on what experts say is a genocide in motion being carried out by Israeli forces.
Earlier this week, the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, said that Israel's continued blocking of food and medical supplies to Jabalia and other ares in the northern was "having life-threatening impacts" for the people there.
OCHA spokesperson Farhan Haq said the OCHA was calling on Israeli authorities "to allowed safe, sustained and unimpeded access to Jabalia and all areas of the north where people are in desperate need of assistance."
In a post on Friday, Oxfam International mourned the killing of Dr. Ahmad Al-Najar and midwife Laila Jneid, both of whom worked with Juzoor, "killed by Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia," the group said. "They were providing lifesaving health care in Gaza. Attacking aid workers is a war crime." Oxfam repeated its demand for a "cease-fire now" and said healthcare workers should never be a target.
In a dispatch on Friday, Dr. Taghreed Al-Imawi, Juzoor staff and an OBGYN doctor at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, described the untenable situation on the ground.
"The situation is beyond horrific and is very difficult and indescribable," said Al-Imawi. "Dead people, severed body parts and injured people everywhere. We are receiving emergency calls from all the areas of the north. Ambulances are not able to reach the injured. We have seen more than 23 pregnant women among the injured coming to the hospital since last week, wounded either by shrapnel or gunfire, suffering from fractures. Some were in a critical condition. Kamal Adwan Hospital and other semi-operational hospitals have received displacement orders but there is no way to evacuate in any case."
"The pediatrics section is closed as it is full of injured people," Al-Imawi added, "the surgery section is full of injured people, even the reception, the hospital has been shelled several times and targeted by snipers, people are terrified to come to the hospital now."
Having recently returned from a field mission in Gaza, pediatric nurse Becky Platt, working through Save the Children—who posted her testimony Saturday—described a situation on the ground that was "like nothing I've seen before."
Platt said the horrific situation is "both in terms of healthcare need and just in terms of the whole humanitarian context—seeing homes and landscapes completely devastated and seeing just the absolute level of human suffering and need as absolutely mind blowing."
❗️ “Gaza was like nothing I’ve ever seen before”
With Gaza’s health system decimated, children being treated lack adequate pain relief. Healthcare workers have limited access to morphine and are having to treat blast injuries with paracetamol.
Paediatric nurse Becky Platt spoke… pic.twitter.com/zsb4OIvcvI
— Save the Children UK (@savechildrenuk) October 19, 2024
"No child should have to be in pain," she said. "And it just feels like your hands are tied when you can't do what you know that you could do easily at home or in another context. I think that when it really hits. It's just—it's just not fair. It's not okay that we've got children with devastating injuries who don't have access to pain relief."
For his part, Dr. Saleh of FAJR Scientific, said it was up to everyone in the world to make their voices heard.
"The world is watching," he said, "and history will judge us by how we respond to this grave injustice. I call upon each and everyone one of you to join this fight for the preservation of our shared humanity."
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