The Israeli occupation forces are besieging hospitals and camps for the displaced in the northern Gaza Strip amid heavy bombardment. While the Civil Defense accused the occupation of practicing a starvation policy, the United Nations confirmed that Israel does not allow humanitarian aid to enter the region.
The Director General of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Munir Al-Bursh, said that the occupation is besieging hospitals and that the situation is catastrophic, especially in light of the famine.
He added – in an interview with Tel Aviv Tribune – that the number of martyrs in the North Gaza Governorate reached 600 martyrs within 17 days.
The United Nations said that the recent attacks on hospitals in northern Gaza exacerbate the humanitarian crisis and expose the lives of thousands to extreme danger, noting that priority must be given to the arrival of medical care and supplies to prevent further loss of life in Gaza.
For his part, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza told Tel Aviv Tribune that the situation in the Strip’s hospitals is catastrophic, calling on international institutions to put pressure on the occupation to introduce blood units.
In this context, the Baptist Hospital – the only one operating in Gaza City – faces great difficulties in providing treatment to the injured, due to their large numbers, as a result of the ongoing Israeli bombing of Gaza City and its north.
The hospital suffers from a lack of specialized medical personnel, a severe shortage of medical supplies and medicines, and a severe shortage of fuel, which makes it vulnerable to being out of service at any moment.
Paramedics at the Indonesian hospital told Reuters that Israeli forces stormed a school and detained the men before setting the facility on fire. They added that the fire reached the hospital’s generators and caused a power outage.
A nurse at the hospital said, “The army is burning the schools adjacent to the hospital, and no one can enter or leave the hospital.”
Hadeel Obaid, a nursing supervisor at the Indonesian hospital, said that medical supplies are about to run out, including sterile gauze and medicines. She told Reuters that the water supply was cut off and there was no food for the fourth day in a row.
The United Nations said it was unable to reach the three hospitals in northern Gaza.
‘An unprecedented hell’
The media advisor to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Adnan Abu Hasna, described the conditions in the northern Gaza Strip – especially the Jabalia camp – as unprecedented hell, stressing that the Israeli army killed civilians who tried to leave the shelter centers.
Abu Hasna added that more than 100,000 Palestinian civilians in that area are without food, water, or medicine.
For his part, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said that there were reports of deaths among those fleeing the northern Gaza Strip, their bodies being left in the streets, and rescue teams being prevented from reaching them.
The Commissioner-General of UNRWA stressed that humanitarian agencies – including UNRWA – must have access to northern Gaza. He described the refusal to bring in humanitarian aid, and its use as a weapon to achieve military purposes, as an indicator of the loss of the moral compass.
The UN official stressed that every minute is valuable, and that the delay in approvals to enter northern Gaza leads to the inability of rescue teams to treat the injured in a timely manner, and limits their work to recovering bodies.
He added that the Israeli authorities must allow the United Nations to provide humanitarian aid and medical supplies in the northern Gaza Strip.
CNN quoted the Deputy Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza as saying that Israeli army attacks during the past five days targeted at least three facilities run by the agency in the northern Gaza Strip.
The UN official added that the attacks led to significant loss of life, explaining that the situation in northern Gaza exceeds anything they have seen since the beginning of the war.
The UN official expressed his belief that 100,000 residents of Jabalia are besieged, and that the agency was unable to bring any supplies in to them, and that no aid has reached them for 3 weeks.
For her part, paramedic Nevin Al-Dawasa – who witnessed the Israeli army bombing of one of the UNRWA shelter centers in Jabalia camp – said that the Israeli army did not give the displaced people enough time to leave before bombing them, which led to the death of 10 people and the injury of more than 30 others, most of them children.
Pictures from Tel Aviv Tribune showed residents recovering the bodies of martyrs in the streets of Jabalia al-Balad camp as a result of Israeli bombing this morning.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s correspondent said that the Israeli occupation forces targeted citizens, including children, while they were seeking water.
Starvation policy
In a related development, the Gaza Civil Defense spokesman said that the Israeli army is practicing a policy of starvation, exhaustion, and abuse of the Palestinians in Jabalia, and is using excessive force to empty the area of its residents and force them to flee to Gaza City.
Basal added, “The Israeli army is starving citizens through a stifling siege on the area and then carrying out bombings and ground incursions, meaning that whoever did not die from the bombing will die from hunger.”
He pointed out that some of the families that civil defense crews were able to reach said that they had not eaten food for 5 days since they were targeted by the occupation forces.
He pointed out that the Israeli army, after bombing residential areas, is now bombing shelter centers and any gatherings of residents to force them to leave and migrate to Gaza City.
He continued that the occupation did not limit itself to forcing citizens to flee, but also carried out bombing, killing, torturing, and insulting citizens, in order to leave as many of them as martyr or wounded.
On October 5, the Israeli army began unprecedented bombing operations on the camp, the town of Jabalia, and large areas in the northern Gaza Strip, before announcing the next day the start of an invasion of these areas, under the pretext of preventing the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) from regaining its power in the region. While the Palestinians say that Israel wants to occupy the region and displace its residents.
With broad American support, the ongoing Israeli genocidal war in Gaza since October 7, 2023 has left more than 142,000 Palestinians martyred and wounded, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that has killed dozens of children and the elderly.
