Israel’s airstrike on a hospital in Gaza killed at least 28 people as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was “no way” Israel would halt its military action.
The Israeli warplanes on Tuesday struck what it said was a Hamas “command and control centre” located beneath the European Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
The military reportedly dropped six bombs simultaneously on the hospital, which struck both its inner courtyard and the surrounding area, creating deep craters inside the compound.
Dr Tom Potokar, a plastic surgeon working with the Ideals international aid charity, told BBC he was in the hospital when it was struck by Israeli warplanes.
He said “six enormous explosions one after the other” took place after the military directly hit the hospital with “no warning whatsoever”.
“There was complete panic,” he added. The health ministry in the Hamas-run strip later on Tuesday said nine missiles struck the hospital.
The dead were taken to Nasser hospital, which Israel had struck earlier in the day, saying militants were operating inside it, without identifying them. Two people, including well-known Palestinian journalist Hassan Aslih, were killed in that strike.
Israel has accused Hassan Aslih, who has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media platforms, of taking part in the 7 October 2023 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas that triggered the retaliatory attack on Gaza.
Ahmed Siyyam, a Gaza civil emergency service member, told Reuters the attack hit the third floor of the Nasser Hospital building, where dozens of patients and the injured were being treated. Two patients, including Aslih, were killed and several others were wounded, the health ministry said.
The Israeli military said it “eliminated significant Hamas terrorists” in Nasser Hospital, among them Aslih, who it said had “operated under the guise of a journalist”.
According to the International Federation of Journalists, at least 160 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. Officials in Gaza, where Hamas took control in 2007, put the number at 215, and accuse Israel of deliberately targeting journalists. Israel denies this and says it tries to avoid harm to civilians.
Israel reportedly struck the hospitals to target Mohammed Sinwar – the younger brother of the former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Mohammed Sinwar allegedly took over the command of the group’s military wing after the death of Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an Israeli strike.
The hospitals were struck as the World Health Organisation said the high malnutrition rates in Gaza could have a lasting impact on “an entire generation”.
Israel has blockaded supplies into the enclave since early March, when it resumed the devastating military campaign against Hamas after an initial ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Rik Peeperkorn, the representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said he had seen children who looked years younger than their age and about 20 per cent of children screened at a north Gaza hospital suffered from acute malnutrition.
“What we see is an increasing trend in generalised acute malnutrition,” Mr Peeperkorn said. “I’ve seen a child that’s five years old, and you would say it was two-and-a-half.”
“Without enough nutritious food, clean water and access to healthcare, an entire generation will be permanently affected,” he said, warning of stunting and impaired cognitive development.
The UN’s top humanitarian official, Tom Fletcher, also condemned Israel for “deliberately and unashamedly” imposing inhumane conditions on Palestinians during its almost two-year-long war.
Mr Fletcher went as far as saying the UN Security Council must “act now” to “prevent genocide”. Israel denied that it is taking place.
“I ask you to reflect – for a moment – on what action we will tell future generations we each took to stop the 21st century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza,” said Mr Fletcher, a longtime British diplomat who took the UN post in November. “It is a question we will hear, sometimes incredulous, sometimes furious – but always there – for the rest of our lives.”
The UN World Food Programme’s director told the Associated Press that a quarter of Gaza’s population is at risk of famine – despite all the food needed to feed the territory’s population sitting in warehouses in Israel, Egypt and Jordan – and most of it is not even 25 miles away, he said.
Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible starvation, living in “catastrophic” levels of hunger, and a million others can barely get enough food, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.
Despite the backlash, Mr Netanyahu said Israeli forces were just days away from a promised escalation of force and would enter Gaza “with great strength to complete the mission”.
“It means destroying Hamas.”
Any ceasefire deal reached would be temporary, the prime minister said. If Hamas were to say they would release more hostages, “we’ll take them, and then we’ll go in. But there will be no way we will stop the war,” Mr Netanyahu said. “We can make a ceasefire for a certain period of time, but we’re going to the end.”
Israel says 58 hostages remain in captivity, with as many as 23 of them said to be alive, although authorities have expressed concern about the condition of three of them.
Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in the 2023 attack. Israel’s retaliatory war has killed over 52,800 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Strip.
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