The United States indicated this Tuesday that it has information that the Islamist movement Hamas and other Palestinian militias are using hospitals in the Gaza Strip and tunnels beneath them to hide, support military operations and hold hostages.
One of these hospitals is the largest in that Palestinian territory, the Al-Shifa hospital, in Gaza City, according to the spokesman for the White House National Security Council, John Kirby, who stressed that the United States does not support attacks. to health establishments. .
“We do not support airstrikes against hospitals. Hospitals and patients must be protected,” Kirby told reporters accompanying US President Joe Biden aboard Air Force One, on a trip to San Francisco for a summit with the leaders of Asia-Pacific region.
Kirby said the United States also doesn’t want to see “fights in hospitals, where innocent people, helpless people and sick people are simply trying to get the medical care they deserve.”
When asked for evidence to support the claim that Gaza hospitals are being used as hideouts by Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) fighters and their allies, Kirby responded that it “comes from multiple sources of information,” without providing further information. details.
Palestinian authorities on Tuesday called for a ceasefire to evacuate three dozen newborns and other patients trapped in Gaza’s largest hospital, as Israeli forces battle Hamas in surrounding streets and gain more ground in northern Gaza. .
For several days, the Israeli army has surrounded the Al-Shifa hospital, where and under which it claims Hamas is hiding, using civilians as shields for its main command base.
Hospital officials and Hamas deny this accusation. Meanwhile, hundreds of patients, health care professionals and displaced people are trapped inside the facilities, with supplies running low and without electricity to run incubators and other life-saving equipment.
Without refrigeration for days, morgue workers opened a mass grave in the courtyard for more than 120 bodies, authorities said.
The confrontation at Al-Shifa and other hospitals comes as Israeli forces increasingly control parts of Gaza City and the northern part of the Gaza Strip, saying they are expelling and killing Hamas fighters. .
On October 7, fighters from the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) – in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007 and classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel – carried out an attack on Israeli territory of dimensions unprecedented since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, it left 1,200 dead, mostly civilians, around five thousand injured and more than 200 hostages.
In retaliation, Israel declared a war to “eradicate” Hamas, which began with food, water, electricity and fuel cuts in the Gaza Strip and daily shelling, followed by a ground offensive surrounding Gaza City.
The war between Israel and Hamas, which this Tuesday marked 39 days and continues to threaten to spread throughout the Middle East region, has so far left more than 11,000 dead in the Gaza Strip, mostly civilians, and 28,200 injured. 3,250 missing under the rubble and more than 1.6 million displaced, according to the latest report from local authorities.
Source: TSF
