Israeli strike on hospital tent camp kills 4 and ignites fire that burns dozens

Author of the article:

Associated Press

Wafaa Shurafa And Samy Magdy

Published Oct 14, 2024  •  3 minute read

Palestinians look at the damage after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. Photo by Abdel Kareem Hana /AP Photo

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and triggered a fire that swept through a tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns, according to Palestinian medics.

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The Israeli military said it targeted militants hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.

Several secondary explosions could be heard after the initial strike, but it was not immediately clear if they were caused by weapons or fuel tanks.

This handout picture provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), shows fire and smoke billowing at the site of an Israeli air strike around tents for displaced people inside the walls of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip early on Oct. 14, 2024. Photo by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees /AFP via Getty Images

Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.

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Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 wounded. Twenty-five people were transferred to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Israel is still carrying out near-daily strikes across the Gaza Strip more than a year into the war, and has been waging a major ground assault in the north, where it says militants have regrouped.

The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while Palestinian militants abducted around 250 hostages. Around 100 are still being held inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. Around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced by the war, often multiple times, and large areas of the coastal territory have been completely destroyed.

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Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, estimated at around 400,000 people, to evacuate to the south and has not allowed any food to enter the north since the start of the month. Hundreds of thousands of people from the north heeded Israeli evacuation orders at the start of the war and have not been allowed to return.

That has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel intends to implement a plan devised by former generals in which it would order all civilians out of northern Gaza and label anyone remaining there a combatant — a surrender-or-starve strategy that rights groups say would violate international law.

The plan has been presented to the Israeli government, but it’s unclear whether it has been adopted. The military says it has not received such orders.

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Israeli rights groups on Monday called on the international community to prevent Israel from carrying out the plan, saying there are “alarming signs” that Israel is beginning to implement it.

The statement, signed by B’Tselem, Gisha, Yesh Din and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, warned that states “have an obligation to prevent the crimes of starvation and forcible transfer.”

With no end in sight to the war in Gaza, Israel is also waging an air and ground war in southern Lebanon against the Hezbollah militant group, an ally of Hamas that has been firing rockets into northern Israel for more than a year. Israel has also threatened to strike Iran in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack, raising the prospect of an all-out regionwide war.

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A Hezbollah aerial attack on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers — all of them 19 years old — and severely wounded seven others Sunday, the military said, in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.

Hezbollah called the attack near Binyamina city retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani brigade, launching dozens of missiles to occupy Israeli air defence systems during the assault by drones.

Israel’s national rescue service said the attack wounded 61. It’s rare for so many people to be wounded by drones or missiles, most of which are intercepted by Israel’s multitiered air defences or fall in open areas.

— Magdy reported from Cairo.

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