GAZA STRIP (AFP) – Israel said it had taken into custody 100 people at one of Gaza’s main hospitals after troops raided the facility, with fears mounting on Saturday for patients and staff trapped inside.
The deadly bombardment of Gaza continued overnight with another 100 people killed in Israeli strikes, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
At least 120 patients and five medical teams are stuck without water, food and electricity in the Nasser hospital in Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Yunis, according to the Health Ministry.
Israel has for weeks concentrated its military operations in Khan Yunis, the hometown of Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar.
This week, intense fighting has raged around the Nasser hospital – one of the Palestinian territory’s last remaining major medical facilities that remains even partly operational.
The power was cut and the generators had stopped after the raid, leading to the deaths of six patients due to a lack of oxygen, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
“New-born children are at a risk of dying in the next few hours,” the ministry warned on Saturday.
Israel’s army said its troops entered the hospital on Thursday, acting on what it said was “credible intelligence” that hostages seized in the October 7 attack had been held there and that the bodies of some may still be inside.
On Saturday the military said it had detained 100 people from the hospital suspected of “terrorist activity”.
The army also said it had seized weapons and retrieved “medications with the names of Israeli hostages” in the hospital.
But the raid has been criticised by medics and the United Nations. The army has insisted it made every effort to keep the hospital supplied with power, including bringing in an alternative generator.
A witness, who declined to be named for safety reasons, told AFP the Israeli forces had shot “at anyone who moved inside the hospital”.
World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic slammed the operation on Friday, saying “more degradation to the hospital means more lives being lost”.
“Patients, health workers, and civilians who are seeking refuge in hospitals deserve safety and not a burial in those places of healing.” Doctors Without Borders said its medics had been forced to flee and leave patients behind, with one employee unaccounted for and another detained by Israeli forces.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals for military purposes, which the Palestinian Islamist group has denied.
The UN Human Rights Office said Israel’s raid on the Nasser hospital appeared to be “part of a pattern of attacks by Israeli forces striking essential life-saving civilian infrastructure in Gaza, especially hospitals”.
