Palestinians say hundreds killed in Israeli airstrike on hospital; Israel blames Islamic Jihad
CBC
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Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike Tuesday hit a Gaza City hospital packed with wounded and other Palestinians seeking shelter, killing hundreds. However, the Israeli military said it had no involvement in the explosion, which it says was caused by a misfired rocket from the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.
The ministry in Gaza said about 500 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the al-Ahli Hospital and that many of the victims had sought shelter there.
Photos and video purportedly from the hospital on social media showed fire engulfing the building and the hospital's grounds strewn with torn bodies, many of them young children. Around them in the grass were blankets, school backpacks and other belongings. The images could not immediately be independently verified.
The reported strike came as the U.S. was trying to convince Israel to allow the delivery of supplies to desperate civilians, aid groups and hospitals in the tiny Gaza Strip, which has been under a complete siege since Hamas's deadly rocket barrage and incursion into southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Hamas called Tuesday's reported hospital strike "a horrific massacre."
"The news coming out of Gaza is horrific and absolutely unacceptable," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters Tuesday. "International humanitarian and international law needs to be respected in this, and in all cases. There are rules around wars and it's not acceptable to hit a hospital."
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was horrified by the blast, noting hospitals and its workers are protected under humanitarian law.
In southern Gaza, continued strikes killed dozens of civilians and at least one senior Hamas figure on Tuesday in attacks Israel says are targeted at militants.
Wounded people were rushed to the hospital after heavy attacks outside the southern Gaza cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, Gaza residents reported. Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official and former health minister, reported that 27 people were killed in Rafah and 30 were killed in Khan Younis.
An Associated Press reporter saw around 50 bodies brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis since early Tuesday. Family members came to claim the bodies, wrapped in white bedsheets, some soaked in blood.
An airstrike in Deir al Balah reduced a house to rubble, killing nine members of the family living there. Three members of another family that had evacuated from Gaza City were killed in a neighbouring home. The dead included one man and 11 women and children. Witnesses said there was no previous warning before the strike.
Israel's military late last week gave an evacuation order affecting hundreds of thousands in the north of the Gaza Strip, although Hamas, which controls Gaza, told citizens to stay put.
Hamas's military wing, the Qassam Brigades, said in a statement that an Israeli airstrike in the central Gaza Strip killed one of its top military commanders. Ayman Nofal, known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed, was killed Tuesday in a strike that targeted the Bureij camp.
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