The Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas, said at least 500 people were killed on Tuesday night in what it said was an Israeli airstrike on al-Ahli al-Arabi, also known as the Baptist hospital. A spokesperson for the Gaza civil defence put the number of killed at about 300.
The bloodshed at the hospital comes 11 days into a new war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group that continues to escalate before an expected visit to the region by Joe Biden, complicating US efforts to stop the conflict spiralling across the Middle East.
The Israeli military said an initial investigation suggested the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket launch, before saying it was the result of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket barrage. Islamic Jihad denied the Israeli allegation, and the scale of the blast appeared to be outside either of the militant groups’ capabilities.
Footage broadcast from the ground by Al Jazeera showed a huge fire engulfing the multi-storey building, with bodies, including small children, and widespread debris scattered around.
The hospital, which is owned by the Anglican church, was reportedly struck without any prior warning. It was previously hit by a rocket on Saturday in an attack that injured four medical staff.
The strike occurred at about 7.30pm local time. The hospital was packed with people injured in previous Israeli strikes, as well as civilians seeking shelter, believing the hospital grounds to be safer than their homes after relentless Israeli attacks that have already killed more than 3,000 people.
“We were operating in the hospital, there was a strong explosion, and the ceiling fell on the operating room. This is a massacre,” said Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah.
“Nothing justifies this shocking attack on a hospital and its many patients and health workers, as well as the people who sought shelter there. Hospitals are not a target. This bloodshed must stop. Enough is enough.”
More than 300 casualties were taken in ambulances and private cars to Gaza City’s main hospital, al-Shifa, which was already overwhelmed with wounded. Injured people lay on bloody floors, screaming in pain.
Dr Ziad Shehadah told Al Jazeera: “What’s happened is terrible because those people, all of them, are civilians. They fled their homes and reached a place that they believed was safe – a hospital, which according to international law, is a safe place.
“People left their homes thinking they were more dangerous and they move to our schools and hospitals to be safe. And in one minute, all of them have been killed at a hospital.”
Aid agencies and governments around the world were quick to condemn the bombing as a war crime.
The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, demanded the immediate protection of civilians and healthcare in the Palestinian territory.
“WHO strongly condemns the attack on Al Ahli Arab hospital,” he tweeted. “Early reports indicate hundreds of deaths and injuries. We call for the immediate protection of civilians and healthcare.”
Canon Richard Sewell, the dean of the Anglican-run St George’s College in Jerusalem, said: “Disaster: our hospital, Ahli Arab hospital, has taken a direct hit from an Israeli missile. Early reports say hundreds of women and children killed.
“This attack is unprecedented in scale,” Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the West Bank and Gaza, told Reuters. “We have seen consistent attacks on healthcare in the occupied Palestinian territory,” he said.
Hamas, which sparked the latest war with an attack last week that killed more than 1,400 Israelis, called Tuesday’s hospital strike “a horrific massacre”. It said in a statement that most of the casualties were displaced families, patients, children and women.
Before the al-Ahli blasts, Israeli strikes on Gaza had killed at least 2,778 people and wounded 9,700, according to the Gaza health ministry. Nearly two-thirds of those killed were children.
“There are corpses in the streets. Buildings are crashing down on their inhabitants,” Jamil Abdullah, a Palestinian Swede, who was hoping to flee the blockaded enclave, told AFP. “The smell of the dead is everywhere.”
The US president, Joe Biden, is due to arrive in Tel Aviv on Wednesday for talks with Benjamin Netanyahu but will no longer meet Egyptian and Palestinian leaders for a summit in Jordan after it was cancelled in the wake of the hospital blast. The attack raises the stakes for the president’s visit, amid fears of a regional war that could drag in the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and its Iranian backers.
After the cancellation, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement: “What is taking place is genocide. We call on the international community to intervene immediately to stop this massacre. Silence is no longer acceptable.”
Abbas, however, is deeply unpopular with the Palestinian public, many of whom see him as little more as a subcontractor for Israeli security after 16 years in office without elections.
After news of the hospital attack spread, hundreds of people flooded the streets of major West Bank cities including Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, where protesters hurled stones at Palestinian security forces who fired back with stun grenades. “The people want the fall of the president,” demonstrators chanted.
Source: theguardian
Author: Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem
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