The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says the Israeli army killed 274 people during Saturday’s air raid which led to the release of four hostages held since October 7.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry said Sunday that at least 274 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air and ground raid that freed four Israeli hostages held by the Islamist group.
The same ministry further said that around 700 people were also injured in Saturday’s operation.
The United Nations and other international institutions and experts, as well as the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank — Hamas’s rivals — say the Gaza ministry has made a long-standing, good-faith effort to account for deaths under the harshest conditions. .
The High Representative of Foreign Affairs of the European Union indicated for his part that “the bloodshed (had to) stop immediately.”
The military operation in the central Gaza Strip is the largest since October 7, when Hamas and other militants stormed the border, killing some 1,200 people and seizing about 250. hostage.
In Gaza, doctors described scenes of horror and chaos as injured people flooded into nearby hospitals that were already struggling to treat those injured from days of intense Israeli strikes in the region.
“We received the full range of war wounds, traumatic injuries, amputations, eviscerations, trauma, traumatic brain injuries, fractures and, of course, large burns,” said Karin Huster of Doctors Without Borders, an international charity working at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, one of the facilities that received the dead and injured.
“Children who are completely gray or white, because of the shock, have been burned. Many of them do not scream because they are in shock”.
A series of photos taken by the Associated Press shows the extent of Israeli destruction on buildings in the area, as well as the number of injured people, including children.
The Israeli army said it attacked “threats to our forces in the region” and that a special forces officer had been killed during the rescue operation.
Israelis celebrated the return of Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41, on Saturday after Israeli forces raided two sites at once , under enemy fire.
Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 36,700 Palestinians, according to the Hamas ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its tallies.
Israel has also carried out raids on Palestinian towns in the West Bank to quell militancy, resulting in the deaths of around 530 Palestinians.
