Israeli strikes kill 33 people in Gaza; hospital in north makes distress call

CAIRO: Israeli forces killed at least 33 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, including a rescue worker, health officials said, as troops deepened an incursion along the territory’s northern edge, bombarding a hospital and blowing up homes.

Medics said at least 12 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the area of Jabalia in northern Gaza earlier on Wednesday, and at least 10 people remained missing as rescue operations continued. Another man was killed in tank shelling nearby, they said.

Later on Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike killed seven Palestinians, including a girl, in Al-Mawasi, a humanitarian-designated area in western Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Gaza medics said. Palestinian and UN officials say no place in the enclave is safe.

Another air strike on a house in Remal neighbourhood in Gaza City killed four people, while a strike killed three Palestinians and wounded at least 20 others at a school sheltering displaced families in central Gaza Strip, medics said Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, one of three medical facilities barely operational in the besieged northern area, said the hospital “was bombed across all its departments without warning, as we were trying to save an injured person in the intensive care unit” on Tuesday.

“Following the arrest of 45 members of the medical and surgical staff and the denial of entry to a replacement team, we are now losing wounded patients daily who could have survived if resources were available,” he told Reuters in a text message.

“Unfortunately, food and water are not allowed to enter, and not even a single ambulance is permitted access to the north.” There were 85 injured people, including children and women, at the hospital, six in the ICU. Seventeen children had arrived with signs of malnutrition as a result of food shortages. One man died of dehydration a day ago, Abu Safiya added.