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Patients, medics trapped as Israeli tanks shell North Gaza hospitals

This photo shows the site on an Israeli air strike around tents for displaced people inside the walls of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip. (AFP)

Three partially functioning hospitals in the Northern Gaza Strip, which treats severely wounded Palestinians, have now been surrounded and shelled by Israel’s military tanks, according to health authorities.

Muhammad Zaqout said in a statement on Saturday that the regime’s military “deliberately bombs hospitals during its aggression on the northern Gaza Strip, which exacerbates the humanitarian situation.”

Israel prevents the arrival of medicine, food and fuel to northern Gaza, he said.

“We call for the aggression against the people in northern Gaza to stop, and the necessary protection for hospitals and medical personnel.”

Zaqout said the military surrounded and shelled the Indonesian Hospital on Saturday morning.

The facility’s director, Marwan Sultan said in a statement that the regime’s military “tanks have completely surrounded the hospital, cut off electricity and shelled the hospital, targeting the second and third floors with artillery.”

“There are serious risks to medical staff and patients,” he added.

In a statement, Gaza’s health ministry also said Israel had targeted the upper floors of the hospital. It said there were “more than 40 patients and wounded in addition to the medical staff” present.

“Heavy gunfire” towards the hospital and its courtyard had sparked a “state of great panic” among patients and staff, it said.

All three major hospitals in the northern territory area are out of service, according to the ministry. 

The UN humanitarian affairs agency warned on Friday about “the increasingly dire and dangerous situation that civilians in northern Gaza are facing.”

“Families there are trying to survive in atrocious conditions, under heavy bombardment.”

Health officials say the Israeli military is trying to force medical personnel to evacuate the hospitals in northern Gaza.


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