Hospitals in the Gaza Strip will cease or reduce their activities within 48 hours due to lack of fuel, the Hamas Ministry of Health warned on Friday in the Palestinian territory hit by a serious humanitarian crisis and where the Israeli army has carried out new bombings.
International reactions also continue to multiply after the issuance on Thursday by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes in the conflict triggered in Gaza by the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil.
The Hamas Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, where the Islamist movement came to power in 2007, issued Friday “an urgent warning because all hospitals in the Gaza Strip will stop operating or reduce their services under 48 hours due to Israel's obstruction of the entry of fuel into the small besieged territory.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was “deeply concerned” about the situation of 80 patients, including 8 in intensive care, and staff at Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of only two hospitals partially functioning in northern Gaza.
A drone attack had targeted the establishment the day before, damaging the generator and the water tank, added the head of the Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Civil Defense, for its part, reported twelve dead and several injured in Israeli strikes in the east and south of Gaza City.
– “Innocent children” –
“I lost my whole family, 10 people, and I am the only one left,” says Belal, in a room at Al-Ahli hospital where victims were transported. “There were (…) innocent children. What did they do wrong?” another man told AFP, near an unconscious boy on a hospital bed.
Israeli authorities claimed to have “eliminated five Hamas terrorists” during a raid in the Beit Lahia area (north) during the night from Wednesday to Thursday.
This raid left dozens dead and missing, according to Palestinian medical sources.
According to Israeli authorities, two of the men killed were responsible, on the day of the attack on October 7, 2023, for “murders and kidnappings”.
Saying it wanted to prevent Hamas fighters from reconstituting their forces in the area, the Israeli army launched a new major offensive in the north of the Palestinian territory at the beginning of October, which has already left more than a thousand dead, according to the Ministry of Defense. Health in Gaza.
The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data, including hostages killed or died in captivity.
That day, 251 people were kidnapped, 97 of whom remain hostages in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.
The air and then land offensive launched in Gaza in retaliation by Israel left at least 44,056 dead, the majority civilians, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health, deemed reliable by the UN.
The UN humanitarian coordination agency (Ocha) said on Friday that “at least 333 aid workers” had been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.
After more than a year of conflict, the ICC provoked Israel's fury by issuing unprecedented arrest warrants on Thursday against MM. Netanyahu and Gallant.
– “In challenge” –
On Friday, the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, unconditional support of the Israeli leader, announced that he wanted to invite Mr. Netanyahu to Hungary, as a “challenge”.
Iran, for its part, saw in the ICC decision “the political death of the Zionist regime”. France said it took note of this decision and the United Kingdom indicated that it “will respect its legal obligations”.
Hamas welcomed an “important step towards justice”, without mentioning the arrest warrant simultaneously announced by the ICC against the head of the movement's armed wing. Israel announced this summer that it had killed Mohammed Deif, considered one of its masterminds of October 7, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.
The Israeli army also launched a campaign of massive strikes in Lebanon on September 23 against the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which had opened a front to support Hamas after October 7.
New bombings shook the suburbs of Beirut, a stronghold of the Islamist movement, on Friday after a call from Israel to evacuate.
Five rescue workers affiliated with Hezbollah were also killed in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli army has been carrying out ground incursions against Hezbollah fighters since September 30, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
Israel says it wants to remove Hezbollah to allow the return of some 60,000 inhabitants of the north of the country displaced by the exchange of fire with the Lebanese movement. In Lebanon, tens of thousands of residents have also been displaced.
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