- Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine condemns Israeli air strike on al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City
GAZA: At least 37 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza, including in attack on Al-Ahli Hospital in northern Gaza, Deir el-Balah in the central part of the enclave and Khan Younis in the south, the health ministry in the enclave said on Sunday.
According to the ministry’s officials, two Israeli missiles hit a building inside a main Gaza hospital on Sunday, destroying the emergency and reception department and damaging other structures, medics said.
Health officials at the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital evacuated the patients from the building after one person said he received a call from someone who identified himself with the Israeli security shortly before the attack took place. No casualties were reported, according to the civil emergency service.
Images circulating on social media, which Reuters could not immediately authenticate, showed dozens of displaced families leaving the place. Some of them drag sick relatives on hospital beds.
In its statement, the Hamas-run government media office condemned the attack as a “heinous and filthy crime,” saying that Israel “deliberately destroyed and rendered out of service 34 hospitals as part of a systematic plan to dismantle what remains of the healthcare sector in the Gaza Strip.”
In October 2023, an attack on the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital killed hundreds of people. Palestinian officials blamed an Israeli air strike for the blast. Israel said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied blame.
Palestinian Christian group says hospital attack affront to Christian community worldwide
The Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine has condemned the Israeli air strike on al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, Al Jazeera reports.
“The attack, carried out on Palm Sunday, one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar, constitutes a grave violation of religious sanctity and fundamental principles of international humanitarian law,” the committee, which is affiliated with the Anglican Church, said.
The head of the committee, Ramzi Khoury, asserted that the attack was a direct affront to Palestinian Christians and the global Christian community.
The statement said Israel’s assault on the hospital was not an isolated event, but part of a broader, systematic strategy to dismantle Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure and other vital services critical to civilian life.
Al-Ahli Hospital ‘was never designed for mass casualty events’
Dr Mohammed Mustafa, an emergency physician who left Gaza just days ago, tells Al Jazeera that Al-Ahli Hospital is very small and was never designed to handle mass casualties.
Mustafa, who was working at the hospital, said when Al-Shifa Hospital was destroyed, it forced Al-Ahli Hospital to become the focal hospital in Gaza City.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Amman, Jordan, he said when he was at al-Ahli, they could have up to 150 patients arriving at once.
“The emergency department that’s just been destroyed is a 5×15 metre department, it’s very, very small,” he said, adding that it was the only emergency department “functioning for almost close to a million people living in the area”.
He said his colleagues had told him the pharmacy had also been destroyed, as had the blood bank and that one child with traumatic brain injury who was on a ventilator died because the medical staff did not have enough time to get an oxygen cylinder before Israeli forces struck the hospital.
Three Palestinians killed in Beit Lahiya, al-Mawasi ‘safe zone’
Al Jazeera correspondents on the ground are reporting that two Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli shelling of al-Mawasi in the southern Gaza Strip.
Israel has designated al-Mawasi a humanitarian or “safe” zone, but has regularly attacked it throughout the conflict.
Elsewhere, one Palestinian was killed and several were wounded after an Israeli air attack on a group of civilians in Beit Lahiya, according to Wafa.
Red Crescent says missing Gaza medic in Israeli custody
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has said that a medic who had been missing since an Israeli attack on ambulances in Gaza last month is currently being held by Israeli authorities, AFP reports.
“Asaad al-Nsasrah is being held by the Israeli occupation authorities. His fate had remained unknown since he was targeted along with other PRCS medics in Rafah,” PRCS said in a statement, referring to the attack that left 15 medics and rescuers dead.
