DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (AP) — A wave of Israeli strikes throughout Gaza on Sunday hit a hospital, a municipal constructing, a house and a automobile, killing at the very least 21 individuals, together with kids, as Israel vowed to increase its safety presence within the small coastal strip.
A predawn strike on Al-Ahli Hospital, in Gaza Metropolis, was the most recent of a number of assaults on the final main hospital offering crucial healthcare in northern Gaza.
Hospital director Dr. Fadel Naim mentioned the emergency room, pharmacy and surrounding buildings had been severely broken, affecting over 100 sufferers and dozens of employees. He mentioned in a put up on X that they had been warned prematurely.
One affected person, a woman, died throughout the evacuation as a result of employees had been unable to supply pressing care, Gaza’s Health Ministry mentioned. Israel mentioned it struck a Hamas command and management heart on the hospital, with out offering proof. Hamas denied the allegations.
Al-Ahli Hospital is run by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, which condemned the assault, saying in a press release it occurred on “Palm Sunday, the start of the Holy Week, the most sacred week of the Christian year.”
Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and worshipers in Gaza Metropolis marked it in a church whose gilded trim and intact partitions had been a distinction to the widespread particles elsewhere.
Related Press video confirmed the hospital’s caved-in roof surrounded by rubble. The well being ministry’s director normal, Dr. Munir al-Boursh, mentioned sufferers had been carried outdoors in beds and slept within the streets.
“Nothing was left safe. Nothing was left safe inside the hospital, or all over Gaza,” mentioned Mohammad Abu Nasser, an injured man who sat on his mattress open air and regarded on the destruction.
The well being ministry mentioned the hospital was briefly out of service and sufferers had been transferred to different hospitals in Gaza Metropolis. The help group Medical Support for Palestinians known as it the fifth assault on the hospital because the warfare started.
Hospitals have particular safety beneath worldwide regulation. Israel has besieged and raided them, some a number of instances, and struck a number of ones whereas accusing Hamas of utilizing them as cowl for its fighters.
Final month Israel struck Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the most important in southern Gaza, killing two individuals and inflicting a big hearth, the well being ministry mentioned. The ability had been overwhelmed with lifeless and wounded when Israel ended a two-month ceasefire final month with a shock wave of airstrikes.
Charity workers killed
Hours later, a strike on a car in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza killed at least seven people including six brothers, according to staff at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies. The youngest brother was 10.
Their father, Ibrahim Abu Mahadi, said his sons worked for a charity that distributes food to Palestinians. “For what sin were they killed?” he said.
AP reporters saw the mangled, bloodied car as relatives wept over the bodies.
An airstrike Sunday afternoon hit a house in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, killing at least seven people including two women, according to the Indonesian hospital, which received the bodies. A pregnant woman was rescued from the rubble.
“We don’t know whose body is this and whose body is that,” said a neighbor, Abdallah Dardouna. “There is no resistance, there is no Qassam, no Hamas, there is no one here. It’s only civilians here.”
Another strike in Deir al-Balah hit a municipal building Sunday afternoon and killed at least three people, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. In Khan Younis, a strike killed at least three people, according to staff at Nasser Hospital.
Israel’s military said in a statement it had struck over 90 militant targets over the past 48 hours including command and control centers, tunnels and weapons. The military also said it had intercepted a projectile fired from Gaza.
The war started when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, during an Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel and took 250 people captive. Many were eventually freed in ceasefire deals.
Israeli authorities have vowed to pressure Hamas to release the remaining 59 hostages, 24 believed to be alive, and accept proposed new ceasefire terms. It cut off all supplies to Gaza over a month ago.
More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count but says more than half of the dead have been women and children.
Missile reported from Yemen
Israel’s military said a missile was launched from Yemen on Sunday afternoon and the details were under review. Sirens sounded in several parts of Israel and the occupied West Bank. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen continue to target Israel in what they have called solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
Magdy reported from Cairo.
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