TEL AVIV: Israel’s military said it was conducting an operation Thursday inside the main hospital in southern Gaza, while Gaza health officials said Israeli fire killed one person and wounded several others at the site.
An Israel Defense Forces statement said the military had credible intelligence “indicating that Hamas held hostages at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis and that there may be bodies of our hostages in the Nasser hospital facility.”
The IDF repeated its accusation that Hamas fighters are using Palestinian civilians as human shields and said Israeli forces had warned people to stay away from the area for their own safety.
“Our message to them is clear: We seek no harm to innocent civilians. We seek to find our hostages and bring them home. We seek to hunt down Hamas terrorists wherever they may be hiding,” the IDF said.
The Hamas-run health ministry said last week that Israeli sniper fire in the area had prevented people from leaving, while medics warned the situation at the hospital was not safe.
Doctors Without Borders condemned the evacuation order and said its staff at the hospital were treating patients “amid near impossible conditions.”
“People have been forced into an impossible situation: stay at Nasser Hospital against the Israeli military’s orders and become a potential target, or exit the compound into an apocalyptic landscape where bombings and evacuation orders are a part of daily life,” said Lisa Macheiner, Doctors Without Borders project coordinator in Gaza. “Hospitals should be considered as safe places and shouldn’t even be evacuated in the first place.”
Israel has defended its practice of ordering people to evacuate parts of the Gaza Strip throughout the war, saying the warnings are for the safety and protection of Palestinian civilians.
The repeated evacuations, and the war’s move from northern Gaza toward the south, have pushed more than half of Gaza’s population to seek refuge in Rafah, near the Egyptian border.
Australia, Canada and New Zealand Thursday became the latest to join in an international expression of concern for the Palestinians in Rafah ahead of an expected ground offensive by Israeli forces.
(VOA)
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