Fears mounting for thousands of patients as Israel attacks al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City

Israel has been accused of fighting a “war against hospitals” as health facilities are bombed and ambulances are obliterated during horror attacks in Gaza City. Warning: GRAPHIC

Fears are rising for thousands of patients at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which has been completely surrounded by Israeli tanks, making it impossible to evacuate.

Hamas said at least three strikes hit the courtyard and the obstetrics department.

Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesperson for the Hamas-run Health Ministry, said more than 30,000 people remain in the hospital, including patients, staff and displaced locals.

Thousands of displaced residents are sheltering at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Picture: AFP

Blasts have also been reported at and near a number of key health facilities in the embattled strip, including Al-Rantisi Hospital, Al-Quds Hospital and the Indonesian Hospital.

There are fears for thousands of people — not just patients, but for the many civilians who have been seeking refuge at hospitals as bombardments shatter their homes.

“There is a war against hospitals,” said Muhammad Abu Salmiya, head of Al-Shifa Hospital.

“This has never happened in any war. These places are supposed to be safe. [Al-Shifa] shelters patients and women and children.”

Dr Salmiya told Al Jazeera medical staff would stay with patients until the end.

“We will not leave, because we know if we leave the hospital, dozens of patients will die.”

Al-Shifa Director Muhammad Abu Salmiya said it’s a “war on hospitals”. Picture: AFP

It comes as the Palestine Red Crescent sad the looming closure of Al-Quds will leave 500 patients without access to medical care, condemning those in intensive care to death.

Meanwhile, relentless air strikes, paired with fuel shortages and severed utilities and communications, means the Indonesian Hospital is unable to perform surgeries.

Speaking at a Security Council meeting in New York overnight, Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s Observer to the UN, said officials “must call for an end to this massacre”.

“Hospitals have become major Israeli targets,” he said.

Israel claims hospitals are being used to shelter terrorists, accusing Hamas of embedding fighters into civilian infrastructure and saying it will strike “wherever necessary”.

Hamas and local hospital administrators have repeatedly disputed this claim.

The death toll from the conflict is now believed to have exceeded 11,000. Picture: AFP

NETANYAHU REJECTS CALLS FOR INTERNATIONAL FORCE

Meanwhile, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected calls for an international force in the Gaza Strip and said IDF will remain in control after the war ends.

In a rapid flip-flop after earlier saying Israel does not want to occupy the region, promised leaders communities assaulted on October 7 that Israel would bear responsibility for security along the border.

“IDF forces will remain in control of the Strip, we will not give it to international forces,” Netanyahu said, according to a readout from his spokesperson of meetings with the mayors of Gaza border towns.

It comes after officials in the United States proposed an international force with troops from Arab states to manage security in Gaza.

In a statement, Netanyahu said there is determination by the residents and the government to restore security to an even better state than before the Hamas massacre.

“To rehabilitate, to build, to grow. And first of all to bring back security, to ensure there is no Hamas and that Hamas does not return, but also to ensure there is strong life [in the communities] afterwards,” he said, according to the Times of Israel.

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STRIKE ON HAMAS STRONGHOLD

An Israeli strike on a Hamas stronghold hit a Gaza hospital compound, according to the terror group.

Israel did not immediately comment on claims by Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya.

But the IDF reported heavy fighting near the hospital, saying it had killed dozens of militants and destroyed tunnels that are key to Hamas’s capacity to fight.

The Israeli army has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals, particularly Al-Shifa, to co-ordinate their attacks against the army and also as hideouts for its commanders. Hamas authorities deny the accusations.

JOURNALISTS ‘ACCOMPLICES’ IN HAMAS TERROR ATTACK

Major international media outlets have strongly denied that their Gaza photographers had prior knowledge of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, following allegations taken up by the Israeli government.

Denials have been published by US media outlets The New York Times and CNN, as well as global news agencies AP, Reuters and AFP.

The controversy started with an online post by HonestReporting, an organisation that highlights media coverage considered unfavourable to Israel.

HonestReporting said the speed with which certain Palestinian photojournalists in Gaza responded to the attack, and their degree of access to the violence, raised “ethical questions”.

Its claims were taken up by the Israeli government.

“These journalists were accomplices in crimes against humanity; their actions were contrary to professional ethics,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on X.

GAZA DEATH TOLL RISES

Terrorist group Hamas claims that 11,078 people have been killed since in its war against Israel spilt over into the Gaza Strip, including an alleged 4,506 children. The group’s figures have not been independently verified by international observers.

IRAN’S GRIM WARNING

Iran’s Foreign Minister has warned an escalation of the Gaza conflict is “inevitable”, just as Israel agreed to a daily four-hour military halt in northern Gaza and calls for a ceasefire increase.

Quoting Iran’s Press TV, the Times of Israel reported that Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the warning to his Qatari counterpart in a phone call on Thursday.

“Due to the expansion of the intensity of the war against Gaza’s civilian residents, expansion of the scope of the war has become inevitable,” Amir-Abdollahian.

Smoke rises in the background as Palestinians families fleeing Gaza City and other parts of northern Gaza towards the southern areas. Picture: MAHMUD HAMS / AFP

It’s the second time the Iranian Foreign Minister has made such threats. On October 17 he was quoted as saying: “The time for political solutions is running out and the possible expansion of the war on other fronts is approaching the inevitable stage.”

ISRAEL AGREES TO FOUR-HOUR DAILY PAUSES

His warning came as Israel agreed to daily four-hour pauses in military action in north Gaza to enable civilians to get to safety.

The limited pauses build on north-south “evacuation corridors” the Israeli army promised would remain safe and which were used by tens of thousands to flee in recent days.

Gaza locals will be notified three hours before the pauses begin to allow some of the estimated hundreds of thousands still in battle zones in the north to flee south.

The UN estimated 1.5 million people were already seeking safety in the south, but hundreds of thousands of civilians remained trapped in battle zones in the north.

Israeli military spokesman Richard Hecht said the agreement meant no “shift” in strategy. “These are tactical local pauses for humanitarian aid, which are limited in time and area,” he told reporters.

BIDEN RESPONDS TO CALLS FOR CEASEFIRE

US President Joe Biden, who is coming under increasing pressure from within Democratic Party ranks to call for a ceasefire, said in a statement that the pauses “will help get civilians to safer areas away from active fighting. They are a step in the right direction.”

Palestinians rescuers look for survivors as others watch a digger remove concrete blocks after an Israeli strike on Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Picture: SAID KHATIB / AFP

“For weeks, I’ve been speaking with Israel’s leaders about the importance of humanitarian pauses,” he said.

“As of today, there will be two humanitarian passages that will allow people to flee hostile areas in Gaza. And they’ve already enabled thousands to reach safety,” he said.

HAMAS RELEASES MESSAGE ABOUT HOSTAGES

As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepened, there was no progress on the attempts to have more than 200 hostages being held by Hamas freed.

A video from Hamas claiming they would release hostages if “security conditions on the ground are met” was dismissed by Mr Hecht as “psychological terrorism”.

Mr Biden said he was “still optimistic” about freeing hostages held in Gaza, including 10 US citizens.

“We’re not going to stop until we get them out,” he said.

He later confirmed that in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he said had

“asked for a pause longer than three days.”

When asked if he was frustrated with Mr Netanyahu, he said: “It’s taken a little longer than I hoped.”

Mr Biden has firmly stood by key ally Israel since the attacks, visiting Tel Aviv in October and saying Hamas could not be allowed to remain in control of Gaza.

But he has also called on Israel to obey the “laws of war,” avoid civilian casualties, let in humanitarian aid and work on getting out the hostages.

SECRET PUSH TO ALLOW PAUSES IN FIGHTING

Privately Washington has been putting pressure on Israel to rein in its offensive and to allow pauses in the fighting.

Palestinian youths burn tyres during confrontations with Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.

This has been met with resistance, with Israel not wishing to give any appearance of weakness.

Mr Netanyahu used an interview with Fox News to claim Israel had no intention of occupying Gaza after the war.

“We don’t seek to govern Gaza. We don’t seek to occupy it, but we seek to give it and us a better future.”

He said the Israeli army was “performing exceptionally well”.

A Palestinian man carries his belongings as families fleeing Gaza City. Picture: MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)

Asked about Mr Biden’s comments on the slowness of the military pause being announced, Mr Netanyahu said: “Well, it’s taken a little longer than I had hoped”.

He downplayed any suggestion of a rift between himself and Mr Biden.

“It’s taken a little while, but I think we share a common goal, and I very much appreciate the support that President Biden has shown, the administration has shown, the American people have shown and in the Congress on both sides of the aisle,” he said.

Palestinians families fleeing Gaza City and other parts of northern Gaza towards the southern areas, walk along a highway. Picture: MAHMUD HAMS / AFP

Pushed on his plan for Gaza’s future, he said the impoverished and blockaded territory must be “demilitarised, deradicalised and rebuilt.”

“We’ll have to find a government, a civilian government that will be there,” he added, without detailing who might form such a government.

He said Israeli forces would have to remain ready to re-enter Gaza and “kill the killers”.

“That’s what will prevent the re-emergence of a Hamas-like entity,” he said.