Gaza ministry of health until midnight Tuesday reported the deaths as going beyond 500. Reports says that hundreds others are still under the rubble, and if pulled, they are likely to push up number of the casualties.
Some local media report the martyrdom of more than 1,000 people, and AlJazeera reported that the missile did not hit around the hospital but directly its building. The targeting of this hospital happened in a situation where during the past days the Israelis advised civilians, women and children to leave houses and seek refuge in this medical center.
Those wounded have been transferred to other hospitals, but reports suggest that their number is beyond their admission capacity.
The director of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza announced that the situation of all hospitals in Gaza was completely out of control.
RT news reported, quoting the hospital director, that medical teams perform surgeries without anesthesia and in the passages of the hospital, and there is no place for this huge number of the injured and the dead.
He added that a majority of the victims of the bombed hospital were children and women, many of whose bodies were torn apart.
World reactions to the new Israeli crime
Hours after this attack, the wave of global reactions poured. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Palestinian Authority, who was on a trip to Jordan, cut short his trip and announced three days of national mourning after returning to Palestine.
After the attack, the situation in the West Bank is reported inflamed, and the AFP has reported the demonstration of hundreds of infuriated Palestinians in the center of the city of Ramallah against the crimes of the Israelis. AFP reported that the demonstrators also chanted slogans against Mahmoud Abbas. Following this demonstration, the security forces threw tear gas at demonstrators.
The World Health Organization strongly condemned the attack and called for the immediate provision of health care and effective protection to civilians, and the cancellation of evacuation warnings by the Israeli regime and adherence to international humanitarian laws.
On Tuesday evening, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement regarding the killing of civilians, calling it a serious violation of international and humanitarian laws and the most basic values of humanity, and called on Tel Aviv to immediately end the policy of collective punishment of people in the enclave that has been under Israeli blockade since 2007.
In Amman, the capital of Jordan, angry people rushed to the streets and attacked the Israeli embassy to show their disgust to Israeli regime for its crime. According to the AFP report, the demonstrators passed through the checkpoint of the security forces who threw tear gas to disperse them.
In addition to Jordan, popular protests have been reported in other countries as well. In Iraq, a public mourning was announced on Wednesday in memory of the victims of the bombing of the Gaza hospital, and a large number of citizens of this country rushed to the streets to condemn the crime that took hundreds of victims.
In Morocco, on Tuesday evening, thousands of people organized demonstrations in several cities to condemn the Israeli attack.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah declared Wednesday day of “unprecedented wrath” against the Israeli regime and the US President Joe Biden’s visit to Tel Aviv. Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister blasted the international community’s silence to the injustice.
The leaders of many other Islamic countries have also taken a position in condemning the heinous crime of the Israeli regime and criticized the indifference and silence of the international community and demanded a quick stop to the attacks on Gaza
Iran’s President Seyyed Ibrahim Raisi said in a message: :The fire of the American-Israeli bombs that were dropped on the wounded in Al-Maamadani hospital in Gaza will soon overtake the Zionists.”
The Prime Minister of Libya’s National Unity Government, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh asserted that the targeting of Gaza hospital is a “barbaric crime that transcends all boundaries.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on all humanity to stop the unprecedented brutality in the Gaza Strip. In an X message, he said that the bombing of a hospital containing women, children and innocent civilians is the latest example of Israeli attacks that lack the most basic human values.
Also, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia announced that this country strongly condemned the heinous crime committed by the Israeli occupying forces in the bombing of the hospital in Gaza and said that it rejects this barbaric bombing that violates all international laws and norms.
World Council of Churches in a statement said that the Israeli bombing of the hospital was a collective punishment and a war crime according to the international laws.
The council’s statement said that thousands of Palestinians whose houses were demolished took refuge in the hospital that was run by the Angelican Church.
The council demanded the international community to hold Israeli government accountable for its crimes against the civilians, adding: “Israel’s attack on the hospital goes against everything that our monotheistic values demand of us, which are to defense of justice, establishment of peace, and protection of human dignity.”
Dmitry Medvedev, the head of the Russian National Security Council and former president, in a Telegram post held the US the main party responsible for its support for the Israelis, saying: “ It is clear that the horrific attack on Baptist Hospital in the Gaza Strip is a war crime, and the ultimate responsibility lies with those who indifferently make money from war in different countries and continents.... It is the US that falsely claims its global mission is saving the democratic values.”
The Israelis struggle to escape the responsibility for the crime
The Israeli regime is struggling to clear itself from this crime as it sees the global reactions and blames Gaza resistance’s rockets for the attack.
The Israeli military announced in a statement that according to the information from sources they have obtained, the Islamic Jihad movement is responsible for a failed missile attack that instead hit the hospital.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the commander-in-chief of the Israeli Armed Forces and can be convicted for crimes against humanity with this attack, stated that “they kill our children and even do not show mercy with their children.”
The Israeli claims came as hours after the attack, the Permanent Representative of Palestine to the UN Riyad Mansour held the Israeli occupation responsible for the massacre that took place in the hospital and asked the UN Security Council to take responsibility and intervene for an immediate ceasefire.
West seeking to cover up Israeli crimes
But while the world is angrily condemning the terrible crime committed by the Israelis against hundreds of women, children and civilians in the hospital and demanding a quick stop to the regime’s killing machine, the Western governments supporting Tel Aviv voted against the draft resolution proposed by Russia yesterday demanding a ceasefire. By vetoing the resolution, they showed that they are accomplice to the Israelis in killing of the people of Gaza, and once again they took soft-toned stances that cannot force the Israelis to stop their bombing campaign against the civilians.
Biden, whose country has declared its firm support for the killing of Palestinian civilians in blind airstrikes since the start of the brutal attacks and has provided internationally-banned guided bombs to the Israeli regime, on Tuesday without condemning the attack on the hospital and the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian women and children only offered his condolences to the survivors.
The EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrel, just unlike the rest of the world that condemned the Israeli crime, declined to condemn Tel Aviv, only saying that those responsible should be brought to justice.
French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country had voted against the resolution drafted by Russia, hypocritically condemned the attack on the Gaza hospital without referring to the Israeli regime as the attacker.
He again called for the opening of safe corridors for humanitarian aid to reach the Gaza Strip without openly criticizing the brutal policy of the Israeli government in cutting off water, electricity and fuel from the residents of Gaza.
Targeted campaign of massacring the children
During the past days of the war and relentless Israeli bombing of residential areas, reports by the Gaza health ministry show that children are the main targets and victims of Israeli bombardment.
Before last night’s attack on the hospital, the website of the ministry of health had announced the number of Palestinian casualties in Gaza as 2,937, of which 800 were children, namely one-third of the total number of Palestinians killed.
This large number of civilian casualties, especially children, drew UNECEF warning about the consequences of the Israeli regime’s repeated threats of a ground attack on Gaza that can endanger the lives of 1.1 million residents, almost half of whom are children.
After cutting off water, food, and electricity to Gaza and putting hospitals, houses, schools, and mosques on the list of targets, now almost all of the Palestinians are exposed to an Israeli policy of genocide.
According to the report published by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, at least 109,000 residential houses (17,000 completely destroyed and 87,000 damaged), 73 schools, 61 media centers, 18 mosques and 165 industrial facilities were destroyed or damaged in the attacks. According to the monitoring group, Israeli regime dropped equivalent to a quarter of a nuclear bomb on Gaza.
Recently, American author and journalist Marc Garlasco told
the Washington Post that “Israel is dropping in less than a week what
the US was dropping in Afghanistan in a year, in a much smaller, much
more densely populated area.”
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