[News] Israeli troops target ambulances, kill medic in Gaza City
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Fri Feb 9 00:50:34 EST 2024
electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-troops-target-ambulances-kill-medic-gaza-city>
Israeli troops target ambulances, kill medic in Gaza City
Maureen Clare Murphy
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy> Rights and
Accountability
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability> 9
February 2024
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Slain Palestinians are brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital following
Israeli airstrikes in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, 8 February.
APA images
Israeli troops deliberately targeted a Palestine Red Crescent Society
convoy, killing a paramedic and wounding two others, the humanitarian
group said on Thursday.
The convoy was attempting to transfer patients from al-Ahli hospital in
Gaza City to facilities in the south when it was attacked on Wednesday.
The mission had been coordinated with the Israeli military, the
humanitarian group said.
Video of the targeted ambulance appears to show bullet holes in its
windshield:
Red Crescent paramedic Mohammed al-Omari, father
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1755644123753656487> to three
children aged between 8 and 14, was killed. He and the rest of the crew
were trapped for more than an hour while bleeding, according to
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1755611010357232006> the Red
Crescent.
The Red Crescent said
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1755545092306227596> that 12 of
its colleagues, including al-Omari, have been “killed while carrying out
their humanitarian work since the beginning of the war.”
The actual number may be higher. The fate of two Red Crescent paramedics
and a young girl they were attempting to rescue in Gaza City
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/02/gaza-city-rescue-palestine-red-crescent/>
last week remains unknown
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1755682617456734717>.
Loay Elbasyouni, who helped engineer the NASA Mars helicopter after
being educated <https://www.unrwa.org/tags/loay-elbasyouni> in UNRWA
schools in Gaza, said his parents were among the patients in the convoy
that was attacked on Wednesday.
Elbasyouni said
<https://twitter.com/AstroLoay/status/1755385964875194842> that his
parents survived “by a miracle” but remained stuck at al-Shifa hospital
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/al-shifa-hospital> in Gaza City.
None of Gaza’s hospitals fully functional
Al-Shifa was the largest and most advanced hospital in Gaza before it
was besieged and raided
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-fails-show-evidence-hamas-command-center-al-shifa-hospital>
by Israeli troops in November.
The hospital had resumed the provision of minimal services in recent
weeks. But the World Health Organization said on Thursday
<https://twitter.com/WHOoPt/status/1755659339807838620> that the
intensification of hostilities in the area in recent days has “undone
progress.”
The UN health agency said that “we cannot let the cornerstone of Gaza’s
health system collapse again.”
None of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain fully functional and only one-third
of them are partially functional, according to
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-114>
the World Health Organization.
A mere four out of 22 health facilities run by UNRWA
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/unrwa> remain operational,
according to the embattled agency serving Palestine refugees.
The destruction of the health sector has been a key feature of Israel’s
military campaign in Gaza.
Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British Palestinian surgeon who was working in Gaza
during the first weeks of the war, has said
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/ghassan-abu-sitta-why-israel-attacks-gaza-hospitals>
that the targeting of health facilities and medical workers is aimed at
making Gaza unlivable and to force the expulsion of its population.
Al-Amal Hospital under siege
Israeli forces are besieging hospitals in Khan Younis in southern Gaza,
which has been the focus of its operations in recent weeks.
The Red Crescent reported
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1755578098878136708> heavy
artillery shelling and gunfire in close proximity to Al-Amal Hospital,
which it administers, in Khan Younis on Thursday. The hospital building
was hit with shrapnel, endangering staff and patients.
The hospital, which is adjacent to the Red Crescent’s headquarters in
Khan Younis, has been under siege for 18 days, according to the
humanitarian group.
On Wednesday
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1755316988430176271>, two
patients being treated at the hospital were injured by Israeli troops
positioned at the hospital gate.
That same day, the Red Crescent reported that a 77-year-old patient died
at Al-Amal Hospital after the depletion of the facility’s oxygen supplies.
Last week, Hedaya Hamad, a Red Crescent program director, was shot and
killed <https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1753849364030599188> by
Israeli troops while attempting to rescue displaced people sheltering at
Al-Amal after they were shot by soldiers.
Two Red Crescent volunteers were arrested while attempting to evacuate
Al-Amal, the humanitarian group said
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1754862866304282793> on Tuesday.
Some 8,000 displaced people sheltering at Al-Amal and the Red Crescent
headquarters were evacuated
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1754571249257263121> on Monday,
with only a few dozen elderly displaced people and 80 patients
remaining, along with around 100 medical staff.
Nurse shot in hospital operating theater
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that a
humanitarian catastrophe was unfolding at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan
Younis.
Some 300 medical staff, 450 patients and 10,000 displaced people are
present at the facility “amid a severe shortage of fuel, anesthesia, as
well as intensive care and surgical supplies,” UN OCHA reported
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-114>.
Citing the health ministry, OCHA added that “the Israeli military has
prevented the movement of ambulances, the disposal of medical and
non-medical waste, and the arrival of the wounded and sick to Nasser
hospital.”
A nurse was reportedly shot and critically injured while in the
hospital’s operating theater on Thursday and a woman was reportedly shot
and killed while fetching water from the facility on Wednesday,
according to OCHA.
The nurse who was shot in the operating theater was directly targeted
with a bullet to his chest and is in critical condition, according to a
medical worker at Nasser Medical Complex.
While OCHA said that the person who was shot by a sniper while
attempting to collect water at Al-Amal was a woman, Al Jazeera
identified her
<https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/2/8/israeli-sniper-kills-palestinian-girl-in-front-of-gaza-hospital>
as 14-year-old Ruwa Qdeih.
Video shows people recovering her lifeless body from the street, her
blood staining the road, and then using a pulley system to move a
container of water from one side of the road to the other.
“Nowhere left for people to flee to”
After laying waste to northern and central Gaza, Khan Younis in the
south has been the focus of Israel’s ground operations after the
collapse of a temporary truce in late November.
A senior Israeli military officer said on Thursday
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-army-peeling-back-khan-younis-believes-hamas-gaza-chief-is-there-2024-02-08/>
that its forces were “peeling back” Hamas infrastructure in the area,
where they say they believe Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is
hiding.
On Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, rejected
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-netanyahu-rejects-gaza-ceasefire-offer-pledges-defeat-hamas-2024-02-07/>
a ceasefire proposal put forward by Hamas, insisting that “only total
victory will allow us to restore security in Israel, both in the north
and in the south.”
The majority of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people are now
concentrated in Rafah, along the southern boundary with Egypt. It is
also the point of entry for most of the very limited aid being brought
into Gaza.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said on Thursday
<https://www.nrc.no/news/2024/february/gaza-israels-military-operation-in-rafah-would-be-fatal-for-displaced-civilians-and-humanitarian-aid/>
that an assault on overcrowded Rafah would “risk the aid system in Gaza
coming to a halt.”
Angelita Caredda, a regional director for the humanitarian group, said
that it could “turn Rafah into a zone of bloodshed and destruction that
people won’t be able to escape.”
“There is nowhere left for people to flee to,” she said.
“Disease and starvation already persist among the displaced population”
in Rafah, the Norwegian Refugee Council said. Hepatitis A,
gastroenteritis, diarrhea, smallpox, lice and influenza were reported in
each of the nine shelters hosting 27,400 people in Rafah that were
assessed by the group.
Aid missions denied and obstructed
The UN secretary-general said on Wednesday
<https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2024-02-07/secretary-generals-remarks-the-general-assembly-priorities-for-2024-scroll-down-for-bilingual-delivered-all-english-version>
that he was “alarmed by reports that the Israeli military intends to
focus next on Rafah – where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have
been squeezed in a desperate search for safety.”
António Guterres added that “such an action would exponentially increase
what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.”
The Biden administration also says it opposes an Israeli incursion into
Rafah. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby, who has
fiercely defended Israel’s operations throughout the war, said
<https://twitter.com/dannyctkemp/status/1755665863225549103> on Thursday
that it “would be a disaster for those people and we would not support it.”
At least 27,840 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since 7 October,
according to
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-114>
the health ministry in Gaza, with another 67,300 injured. Thousands of
others remain missing, many of them feared to be dead under the rubble
or in Gaza’s streets.
An untold number of Palestinians have died from hunger and disease in a
secondary wave of mortality resulting from Israel’s military offensive
and siege.
“The risk of famine in Gaza is increasing by the day, particularly for
hundreds of thousands of people in northern Gaza who have been
predominantly cut off from assistance,” the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Thursday
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-114>.
Since the beginning of the year, only “seven out of 28 planned
humanitarian aid missions to deliver food to the north … were
facilitated by the Israeli authorities,” the UN added.
One of the aid missions “was partially facilitated, eight were impeded,
seven were denied, and five were postponed due to internal operational
constraints,” according to the UN.
On Wednesday, at least 13 Palestinians were reported killed and others
injured when people gathered at a water distribution truck in Gaza City
came under fire.
That same day, “multiple casualties were reported” when a group of
people awaiting humanitarian aid trucks west of Gaza City were fired
upon, according to OCHA.
“This is reportedly at least the sixth incident involving casualties
among people waiting for humanitarian aid in Gaza City,” the UN office said.
On Tuesday, six Palestinian police officers were reported killed when a
vehicle guarding an aid truck in eastern Rafah was struck
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-113>.
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