Khan Younis (Gaza Strip), Oct 18: Doctors hamstrung by dwindling medical supplies rushed Wednesday to save people badly wounded in a massive blast at a Gaza City hospital the day before, performing surgery – often without anaesthesia – on patients lying on floors, as Israel kept up its attacks on the besieged territory.
The Hamas militant group blamed Israel for the massive blast at the al-Ahli Hospital — saying nearly 500 died — while Israel blamed a rocket misfired by other Palestinian militants.
Public outrage over the hospital carnage spread through the Middle East as US president Joe Biden landed in Israel in hopes of preventing a wider conflict in the region.
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The war started when Hamas militants rampaged across communities in southern Israel on October 7.
Upon his arrival, Biden embraced Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and expressed concern for the suffering of Gaza’s civilians. He later said the hospital blast appeared not to be Israel’s fault.
“Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” he told Netanyahu in remarks in front of the media.
Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel resumed shortly before Biden’s arrival, after a 12-hour lull.
Israeli strikes on Gaza also continued Wednesday, including on cities in south Gaza that Israel had described as “safe zones” for Palestinian civilians.
After the hospital blast, Jordan cancelled a meeting between Biden, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. Biden is now visiting only Israel.
The war between Israel and Hamas was “pushing the region to the brink,” Jordanian foreign minister Ayman Safadi told state-run television.
The Israeli military held a briefing Wednesday morning laying out its case for why it was not responsible for the explosion at the al-Ahli Hospital.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said it was not firing in the area when the blast occurred.
And, he said, Israeli radar confirmed a rocket barrage was fired by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad from a nearby cemetery at that time of the blast, around 6.59 pm.
Independent video showed one of the rockets in the barrage falling out of the sky, he said.
The misfired rocket hit the parking lot outside the hospital. Were it an airstrike, there would have been a crater there; instead, the fiery blast came from the misfired rocket’s warhead and its unspent propellant, he said.
The Israeli military also released a recording they said was between two Hamas militants discussing the blast, during which the speakers say it was believed to be an Islamic Jihad misfire.
Hagari said Israeli’s intelligence would be shared with US and British officials. He also questioned the death toll provided by Gaza’s Hamas-led Health Ministry.
Since the war began, roughly 450 rockets fired at Israel by militant groups had landed in Gaza, the Israeli military said.
Hamas called Tuesday’s hospital blast “a horrific massacre,” saying it was caused by an Israeli strike.
Islamic Jihad dismissed Israel’s claims, accusing Israel of “trying hard to evade responsibility for the brutal massacre it committed.”
The group pointed to Israel’s order that al-Ahli be evacuated and reports of a previous strike at the hospital as proof that the hospital was an Israeli target. It also said the scale of the explosion, the angle of the bomb’s fall and the extent of the destruction all pointed to Israel.
The Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Hosam Naoum, confirmed that the hospital, run by the Episcopal Church, had received at least three Israeli military orders to evacuate in the days before the blast.
It was hit by Israeli shelling Sunday, wounding four staffers, he said. Israel had ordered all 22 hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate last week.
Naoum declined to cast blame on either party for the blast. “As people of the cloth, we are not military experts … We just want to let people see what is happening on the ground and hope that people will come to the conclusion that we’ve had enough of this war,” he said.
The blast left gruesome scenes. Hundreds of Palestinians had taken refuge in al-Ahli and other hospitals in Gaza City, hoping they would be spared bombardment after Israel ordered all residents of the city and surrounding areas to evacuate to the southern Gaza Strip.
Ghassan Abu Sitta, a plastic surgeon working at al-Ahli, said he heard a loud explosion and the ceiling of his operating room collapsed.
“The wounded started stumbling toward us,” he wrote in an account posted to Facebook. He saw hundreds of dead and severely wounded people.
“I put a tourniquet on the thigh of a man who had his leg blown off and then went to tend to a man with a penetrating neck injury.”
Video that The Associated Press confirmed was from the hospital showed the hospital grounds strewn with torn bodies, many of them young children, as fire engulfed the building.
On Wednesday morning the blast scene was littered with charred cars and the ground was blackened by debris.
Hospital director Suhaila Tarazi said the aftermath of the blast was “unlike anything I have ever seen or could ever imagine.”
“We are all losers in this war. And it must end,” she said.
Ambulances and private cars rushed some 350 casualties from the al-Ahli blast to Gaza City’s main hospital, al-Shifa, which was already overwhelmed with wounded from other strikes, said its director, Mohammed Abu Selmia.
“We need equipment, we need medicine, we need beds, we need anesthesia, we need everything,” Abu Selmia said. He warned that fuel for the hospital’s generators would run out within hours.
The death toll was in dispute, even among those in Gaza. The Health Ministry initially said 500 had died, but revised that number slightly to 471 on Wednesday, without giving details of the dead.
Al-Ahli officials said only that the toll was in the hundreds. Selmia said he thought the toll was closer to 250.
The bloodshed unfolded as the US tried to convince Israel to allow the delivery of water, fuel and food to desperate civilians, aid groups and hospitals in the tiny Gaza Strip, which has been under a complete siege since Hamas’ deadly attack.
As of Wednesday morning, no humanitarian aid was passing through the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only connection to Egypt, where truckloads of aid have been waiting for days to enter.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 3,478 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 12,000 wounded, with most of the casualties being women, children and the elderly.
Another 1,300 people across Gaza are believed to be buried under the rubble, alive or dead, health authorities said.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly civilians slain during Hamas’ deadly incursion, which resulted in some 200 hostages taken into Gaza. Militants in Gaza have launched rockets every day since, aiming at cities across Israel.
Protests erupted across the Middle East after the hospital blast in Gaza City, and leaders condemned Israel.
In Amman, Jordan’s king said in a statement that “this war, which has entered a dangerous phase, will plunge the region into an unspeakable disaster.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian called on Muslim nations to expel their Israeli ambassadors and impose an oil embargo on Israel in protest of the blast.
With troops massed along the border, Israel has been expected to launch a ground invasion into Gaza, though military officials say no decision has been made.
A strike on a three-story building in Gaza City on Wednesday killed 40 people and another on a bakery in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed four bakers, according to witnesses.
The Israeli military says it is targeting Hamas hideouts, infrastructure and command centers and accuses the militants of hiding among civilians.
Aid workers warned the situation was growing perilous.
“It’s not just that people are going hungry, people are at the risk of starvation,” said Alia Zaki, a spokesperson for the World Food Program.
More than 1 million Palestinians have fled their homes — roughly half of Gaza’s population — and 60 per cent are now in the approximately 14-kilometre (8-mile) long area south of the evacuation zone, the UN said.
The Israeli military again called on Palestinians to move out of Gaza City and head south, saying that if aid were to be delivered it would be near the city of Khan Younis in south Gaza. (AP)
