From journalists working for a television channel affiliated to an Islamist group to hospital staff, at least 45 people were killed on Thursday in several Israeli raids on the war-torn Gaza Strip, according to various Palestinian sources.
The director of the Kamal Adwan hospital, one of only two still operating in the north of this Palestinian territory ravaged by more than a year of war between Hamas and Israel, appealed for help on Monday.
Claiming that his establishment was being targeted by the Israeli army, Dr Hossam Abou Safiya asked the international community to intervene ‘urgently before it is too late’.
He announced on Thursday evening that five members of his staff had died as a result of an ‘Israeli strike’: a paediatrician, a laboratory technician, two ambulance drivers and a maintenance worker.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army had no immediate comment. It launched a vast offensive in the north of the Gaza Strip at the beginning of October to prevent Hamas members from regrouping, according to the army.
The day began with the announcement by a Palestinian television channel affiliated to Islamic Jihad, Al-Quds Today, that five of its journalists had been killed in an Israeli strike on their vehicle in the centre of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army replied that it had targeted ‘active members of Islamic Jihad posing as journalists’.
The head of paediatrics at a hospital in the south of the territory also said that three babies under a month old had died in 48 hours this week because of the cold.
‘The most recent case was that of an innocent three-week-old girl brought to emergency with a severe drop in body temperature, which led to her death’, said Dr Ahmed al-Farra.
The little girl, Sila al-Faseeh, was living in a tent with her parents in a camp for displaced persons on the Mediterranean coast near the town of Khan Younès.
‘It's very cold in our tent, we can't live there. The children are always sick,’ her father, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, told AFP.
Throughout the day, the Gaza Strip's Civil Defence reported dozens of deaths in various strikes on the coast.
According to the organisation, 13 people were killed in the bombardment of a house in the west of Gaza City where ‘many families displaced’ by the fighting were living.
For its part, the Israeli army named two soldiers aged 27 and 35 ‘killed in action’ in the Gaza Strip, bringing to 391 the number of Israeli soldiers who have lost their lives in this Palestinian territory since the start of the war.
This was triggered by the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
More than 45,000 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli military campaign in retaliation, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas government's Ministry of Health for Gaza, deemed reliable by the UN.
With AFP.
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