Israel steps up attacks on Gaza's hospitals

By Bekir Aydogan

ISTANBUL (AA) - The Israeli army has ramped up its indiscriminate attacks on hospitals and surrounding areas where displaced Palestinians sought refuge, as it maintained its intensive shelling of the Gaza Strip.

The attacks have left more than 32,000 Palestinians dead and over 74,000 injured, including women and children. Schools, mosques, churches, and historical-cultural sites have also been destroyed during raids.

One of the primary targets is Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, which serves as the largest healthcare center in the area.

The Israeli army raided the hospital on March 18, which houses thousands of ill and wounded patients, as well as displaced residents.

The military's siege on the hospital has resulted in the detention and interrogation of over 800 individuals, with more than 170 Palestinians reported dead.

Beyond targeting the hospital on the grounds that it was the "command center" of Hamas, Israeli forces besieged the Emel and Nasser hospitals in southern Gaza.

Reports indicate that communication with staff at Emel Hospital has been cut off, and Israeli drones have called for everyone inside to walk out of the premises, threatening further escalation.

Eyewitnesses report that Israeli tanks pounded the upper floors of Al-Shifa Hospital, causing significant damage.

The attacks on hospitals and their surroundings have generated numerous casualties, forced displacements, and a dire situation where patients battle to access necessary medical care.

Speaking to an Anadolu reporter, 45-year-old Palestinian Imad Murshid noted that the Israeli army bombed Al-Shifa Hospital and set some parts of it on fire, stressing that the streets around the Shifa Hospital were full of the bodies of those who died in week-long attacks.

"The people inside were either killed or detained and taken to an unknown place," Murshid added.

Although patients in the hospital and its surroundings sought to receive treatment in other health institutions that they could barely reach, it was reported that some patients lost their lives because they could not receive treatment due to the attacks.

Israel first raided Al-Shifa Hospital last November, arguing that the Palestinian group Hamas used it as a command center.

- Amal and Nasser hospitals in the south also targeted

Concurrently, the Israeli army began to besiege Amal and Nasser hospitals in the south of Gaza on March 24.

The Palestinian Red Crescent announced that communication was cut off with the staff at Emel Hospital, which was surrounded by Israeli forces in Khan Younis, south of Gaza.

Noting that Israeli forces made a call with unmanned aerial vehicles to "everyone inside the hospital to come out naked," the Palestinian Red Crescent affirmed that Israel threw smoke bombs at Emel Hospital to take out medical teams, patients, and those who were forcibly displaced.

The Palestinian Red Crescent stressed that a volunteer healthcare worker and a displaced Palestinian died in Israeli raids on the Amal Hospital, and that the Israeli forces asked the patients and the displaced Palestinians who took shelter there to evacuate the hospital.

The other day, the Israeli army also raided the Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

According to eyewitnesses, the Israeli army's vehicles entered the areas near the Nasser Hospital campus, which houses thousands of displaced Palestinians.

UNICEF spokesman James Elder noted in his statement on March 20 that "dead silence" prevailed in the corridors of Nasser Hospital, which suffered heavy damage from bombings.

He added that 12 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are providing partial service.

Speaking to an Anadolu reporter, Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Christopher Lockyear emphasized that some of the MSF medical teams made several visits to the north of Gaza, including Nasser Hospital, and said the hospital surroundings were completely razed.

Hamas also emphasized that Israel's targeting of hospitals in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7 is "evidence of a war of destruction."

A statement by the group said: "This situation proves that Israel is trying to drive people from their lands by destroying all living possibilities in the Gaza Strip, especially hospitals, and is waging a war of extermination against our people."

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Palestinian territory since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Serdar Dincel from Istanbul