by Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO, March 28 (Reuters) – Hamas and Islamic Jihad said on Thursday they attacked Israeli forces grouped around Al Chifa hospital in Gaza City with rockets and mortars.
The Israeli army, for its part, declared that it was continuing its operations in the vicinity of the establishment that it stormed more than a week ago, accusing armed Palestinian groups of having entrenched themselves there.
In a statement, the IDF assured that its forces had killed 200 Palestinian fighters since the start of its operation “while avoiding harm to civilians, patients, medical teams and medical equipment.”
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According to the Hamas-administered Gaza Health Ministry, patients and injured people have been gathered in an administrative building in Al Chifa which is not equipped to treat them. Five patients have died since the Israeli raid began due to lack of care, food or water, he said.
Al Chifa, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip before the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, was still partially operational before the latest clashes. It also housed displaced people.
Images circulating on social media, which Reuters could not authenticate, show his surgery unit blackened by flames and neighboring apartments on fire or destroyed.
In a statement, the armed branches of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they had “bombarded, with a barrage of mortar shells, the groups of Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of the Al Chifa complex” during a joint action.
In a separate statement, Islamic Jihad added that it targeted an Israeli tank with an anti-tank rocket outside the hospital.
The Israeli army said Palestinian fighters were firing at its troops from both outside and inside the facility’s emergency building.
Hamas denies using civilian buildings to protect itself from Israeli attacks, as Israel accuses it of doing.
According to the latest report provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health, 32,552 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israeli offensive launched in retaliation for Hamas raids against villages and kibbutz and a techno festival in the south of Gaza. Israel on October 7, which cost the lives of around 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians.
Several thousand other Palestinian victims are believed to be buried under the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli bombings and more than 80% of the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants have been driven from their homes by the fighting and are threatened with starvation. .
FIGHTS IN KHAN YOUNÈS
In the south of the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces continue to surround the Nasser and Al Amal hospitals in Khan Younes, and other areas are under Israeli fire, residents report.
The Palestinian Red Crescent announced that seven of its employees arrested during a raid on Al Amal Hospital on February 9 had been released after 47 days in Israeli jails.
Among them is the director of ambulance services in the Gaza Strip, Mohamed Abou Moussabeh. Eight members of the Red Crescent are still detained, he said in a statement.
The Israeli army, for its part, announced the arrest by special forces of dozens of Palestinian fighters in the Al Amal sector and the seizure of explosives and assault rifles.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Al Amal Hospital has stopped functioning due to the fighting, and only ten hospitals remain partially operating in the Gaza Strip, out of the 36 hospitals in the enclave. before the war.
“Once again, the WHO calls for an immediate end to attacks on hospitals in Gaza and calls for the protection of healthcare workers, patients and civilians,” the director general of the WHO said on the X platform. UN agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
In Rafah, at the southern tip of the enclave, facing the Egyptian border, where more than a million inhabitants of the territory have taken refuge, an Israeli airstrike on a house led to the death of eight people.
Israel repeats its intention to launch a ground assault on Rafah, where it believes most Hamas fighters are entrenched, an offensive opposed by its first ally, the United States. (With James Mackenzie, Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber in Geneva, Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the French version)
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