In southern Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, a young man cradled the lifeless body of his brother then reached out to try to grab a medic running past him in the corridor.
“My brother!”, the man yelled out, crying and slapping the floor as others crowded around him seeking treatment for their wounded and mourning their loved ones yesterday, the third day of renewed warfare and Israeli bombardment.
The hospital is one of only a handful operating in Khan Younis, a southern city which residents say is one of the focuses of the Israeli offensive that resumed on Friday after the collapse of a truce with Palestinian group Hamas.
Nearby, doctors stepped over bodies and pools of blood as they rushed to their next case, and relatives brought more dazed and sometimes unconscious children through the main doors.
Supplies
Footage taken by Reuters showed about a dozen young people needing treatment, several of them with serious injuries.
The UN and aid groups say dozens of medics have been killed since the war began and basic supplies, including fuel to run generators, are running short in hospitals and clinics.
More than 15,500 people have been confirmed killed in Gaza since the start of the conflict, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
The Israeli military said its ground forces were active across the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces bombed swathes of the besieged enclave yesterday, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, as civilians sought shelter in a shrinking area of the south.
“The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) continues to extend its ground operation against Hamas centres in all of the Gaza Strip,” spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters in Tel Aviv in the clearest sign its planned ground offensive in the south had begun. “The forces are coming face-to-face with terrorists and killing them.”
The Israeli military earlier ordered Palestinians to evacuate several areas in and around Khan Younis and posted a map highlighting shelters they should go to. But residents said that areas they had been told to go to were themselves coming under attack.
One man at Nasser Hospital said that an air strike had hit a house in the city and he had carried a young boy who was injured to the hospital, but the boy had died in his arms on the way. Elsewhere in Khan Younis, families gathered at funerals.
One man, Akram El Rakab, said he was burying his son as well as a sister and a nephew. He said he was praying to God to help Palestinians stay strong and would stay where he was in the city.
Residents of a town in the West Bank where a man died during a raid by Israeli settlers said yesterday the incursions had become more brazen since the start of the war with Gaza and troops were standing by and letting the raids go on.
The comments came a day after residents said settlers raided two Palestinian communities in the north of the occupied West Bank, burning cars and clashing with residents who came out to confront them.
“They besieged the houses, burned the cars, pushed the car down a hill and burned it, and the soldier stood there and did not say a thing,” said Mustafa Mohammad, a resident of Qarawat Bani Hassan, where a 38 year-old man was shot dead.
The Palestinian ambulance service confirmed the death and said the funeral of the man, named as Ahmed Assi, was held on Sunday.
In another incident, Wajih Al-Qat, head of the local council of the village of Madama near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, said a group of about 15 settlers burned the car and broke the windows of a house with stones.
The attacks were the latest in a series of similar events involving settlers that have drawn condemnation from world leaders including US President Joe Biden, whose administration is set to impose visa bans on extremist settlers.
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) yesterday called on Israel to respect the international rules of war and said he was accelerating his investigation into violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
“In Gaza, there is no justification for doctors to perform operations without light, for children to be operated upon without anaesthetics. Imagine the pain,” ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said in a video message posted online after a four-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
“I was crystal clear, that this is the time to comply with the law. If Israel doesn’t comply now, they shouldn’t complain later.”
“We have been investigating and we are accelerating investigations,” he said of the situation in the West Bank.
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