Zionist Airstrikes on Gaza Hospitals Intensify

Date: 04 November 2023 - 21:53

News ID: ۱۲۱۰۹۱

GAZA CITY (Dispatches) – The occupying regime of Israel on Saturday struck Al-Fakhoura school in the Jabalia neighborhood in Gaza, martyring at least 15 people and wounding dozens of others, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Thousands of people, who had fled their homes due to bombing, were sheltering in the school when missiles struck, leaving craters in the courtyard and causing panic.
Victims of the bombing were mostly women and children sitting in the school yard, according to a health ministry official, who said they “were torn to pieces” and “their bones and flesh were collected in plastic bags”.
Israeli bombing also targeted Al-Quds hospital, while Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza shut down after its generator stopped working due to fuel shortages.
Al-Nasr Children’s hospital, the only one of its kind in the besieged enclave, was also targeted.
Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesperson for the Palestinian health ministry, announced that 16 hospitals in Gaza have now been rendered out of service, while 105 medical facilities have been targeted.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “horrified” by the bombing that struck an ambulance convoy outside Al-Shifa hospital Friday.
He added that “now, for nearly one month, civilians in Gaza, including children & women, have been besieged, denied aid, killed and bombed out of their homes. This must stop.”
At least 15 people were martyred in the bombing of Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, according to Al Jazeera. Video footage circulating online showed bloody and chaotic scenes.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “utterly shocked by reports of attacks on ambulances evacuating patients close to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, leading to deaths, injuries and damage.”
“We reiterate: patients, health workers, facilities and ambulances must be protected at all times. Always,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Video footage shared by Al Jazeera Arabic showed Israel bombing al-Azhar University in Gaza. Since the war started, the occupying regime has also bombed Gaza University, the Islamic University of Gaza and Al-Aqsa University.
The health ministry also said that around 2,200 people, including 1,250 children, are buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza and that one Palestinian in Gaza has been martyred every four minutes since the start of the war.
Israeli missiles also targeted the home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who is not at present in Gaza, according to Reuters.
The death toll of the Zionist regime’s most ruthless bombing campaign in Gaza has reached 9,448 since the start of the war on October 7, including 3,900 children and 2,500 women.
Local Palestinian media reported that Israeli bombing was intentionally targeting vital services, including mosques, solar panels, generators and hospitals, as well as water tanks. Gaza’s Al-Azhar University was also bombed, seen in footage shared widely online.
Over 25,000 tonnes of explosives have been dropped on Gaza by Israel since the start of the war, Gaza’s media office announced on Saturday.
The Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, announced that they killed five Israeli soldiers and wounded several others in a building northwest of Gaza City.
Meanwhile, another exchange of fire took place at the Lebanon border, with the Zionist army saying it attacked Hezbollah targets.

In response, rockets were launched from southern Lebanon at Zionist targets near the border.

Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday warned Israel against any major operation against Lebanon, saying that “all options are on the table on the Lebanese front”.

In Jordan, meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected calls for a ceasefire during a meeting with his Arab counterparts in Amman. He claimed that a truce would leave Hamas in a position to regroup and carry out similar attacks to the one on October 7 which killed around 1,400 Zionists.

Blinken was set to meet the Saudi, Qatari, Lebanese, Emirati, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers, as well as Palestinian representatives, who will press for an immediate ceasefire. Blinken will also visit Turkey for two days from Sunday as part of a regional tour.

Turkey on Saturday recalled its ambassador to Israel in view of “the ongoing humanitarian tragedy in Gaza caused by continued attacks on civilians and Israel’s refusal [to accept] a ceasefire,” the Turkish foreign ministry said.

In London, tens of hundreds of people gathered outside the BBC offices to demand a ceasefire and criticize the network’s coverage of the war. A sit-in was also staged in Oxford Circus, one of the busiest parts of the capital.

More than 600 academics and scholars co-signed an open letter, demanding that universities in Ireland suspend all ties with the occupying regime of Israel.

The letter states: “The scale and severity of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip has exceeded all previous levels of violence in the prolonged and brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine. It is a campaign of ethnic cleansing and, according to many experts, genocidal violence.”

“The dehumanizing language and tropes widely used by Israeli leaders in reference to Palestinians echo those typically associated with genocidal incitement and intent,” the letter read.

Among those who have signed the letter are Professor Kathleen Lynch and Professor Eugenia Siapera, both from University College Dublin, and Professor Aoife O’Donoghue, from Queen’s University, Belfast.

In the occupied West Bank, Zionist settlers mounted an Israeli flag on the minaret of a mosque in the occupied West Bank, in the latest example of increased attacks.

The mosque is in the Al-Fawwar refugee camp, close to Al-Khalil. According to local media reports, settlers also removed photos and posters that had been left in remembrance of those killed in Israeli attacks.