Terrified, Doctor Mohammed Harara films himself wandering in a room at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younes, in the south of the Gaza Strip. All around, debris from an explosion litters the ground, the air is saturated with dust. “Is there anyone still inside?” », repeats the doctor in this short video posted Thursday February 15 on Instagram, against a backdrop of artillery fire. The Israeli army has just launched its assault on the largest hospital complex still in operation in the Gaza Strip. Another video shot by Palestinian journalist Mohammed Salama shows patients evacuated in chaos, after a strike on the orthopedics ward, which killed one patient. Faced with the assault, more than 400 people, including 191 patients, were transferred to a wing of the hospital, without water or food, according to the local health ministry.
“The Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis was hit by shelling early this morning, after the Israeli army announced to medical staff and patients that they could stay in the hospital”, reported on X the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), reporting a “undetermined number of people killed and injured”. The Israeli military claimed to have launched their raid after collecting “credible intelligence from various sources, including released hostages, indicating that Hamas had held hostages” in the Nasser hospital – something the Palestinian Islamist movement denies.
The army hopes to find traces of the hundred Israelis still detained in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023 or those of the remains of the twenty-nine hostages who have been killed there since. Thursday evening, the soldiers’ spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, indicated that they “still looking” – only grenades have so far been discovered in the complex.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights denounced the “tendency of Israeli forces to attack critical infrastructure to save lives in Gaza, including hospitals”. Already strangled by the Israeli siege of the enclave and overwhelmed by the influx of dead and injured caused by the bombings, the Gazan health system is systematically targeted by the Israeli military. The assault on the Nasser hospital took place according to a pattern similar to the attacks inflicted on most hospitals in northern Gaza in recent months: Al-Shifa, Kamal-Adwan, Al-Awda, Al-Rantissi …
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