Gaza hospitals under growing threat

Crowded hospitals in northern Gaza are under growing threat. The UN said on Monday that strikes hit near Gaza City’s Shifa and Al-Quds hospitals and the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza in recent days.

All 10 hospitals still working in northern Gaza have received evacuation orders in recent days, the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said. Along with thousands of patients and staff, around 117,000 displaced people are staying in these facilities, it said.

Residents reported strikes near Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest, where tens of thousands of civilians are sheltering.

Israel accuses Hamas of having a secret command post beneath the hospital but has not provided much evidence. Hamas denies the allegations.

Strikes hit within 50 metres (yards) of Al-Quds Hospital after it received two calls from Israeli authorities on Sunday ordering it to evacuate, the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said. Some windows were blown out, and rooms were covered in debris. It said 14,000 people are sheltering there.

Israel ordered Al-Quds Hospital to evacuate more than a week ago, but it and other medical facilities have refused, saying evacuation would mean death for patients on ventilators.

“Under no circumstances, hospitals should be bombed,” the director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Robert Mardini, told CBS’s Face the Nation. About 20,000 people were sheltering at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, emergency director Dr Mohammed Qandeel said.

“I brought my kids to sleep here,” said one displaced resident who gave her name only as Umm Ahmad. “I used to be afraid of my kids playing in the sand. Now their hands are dirty with the blood on the floor.” An Israeli airstrike hit a two-story house in Khan Younis on Sunday, killing at least 13 people, including 10 from one family. The bodies were brought to Nasser Hospital, according to an AP journalist at the scene. (With AP inputs)