Shaaban Bilal (Gaza, Cairo)
The Israeli army continues to commit new massacres against displaced Palestinians and imposes a siege on 3 hospitals in the Gaza Strip, as part of ongoing military operations for the fifth day in a row in the northern Gaza Strip.
Yesterday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced that 28 Palestinians were killed and 54 others were injured in a new massacre committed by Israel with an aerial bombardment of the “Rufaida” school, crowded with displaced people in the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
The ministry said, in a statement: “The occupation committed a new massacre by targeting displaced people in the Rufaydah School in the Deir al-Balah area in the Central Governorate on Thursday afternoon, with 28 martyrs and more than 54 injured arriving at hospitals.”
For its part, the government media office in Gaza said in a statement: “The Israeli army was aware that this school included thousands of displaced children and women, and it chose the time of the bombing at the peak time of their movements to obtain their daily food.”
He added, “This crime brings the number of shelter and displacement centers bombed by the Israeli army to 190 centers, which include hundreds of thousands of people displaced as a result of the war waged by the occupation army against the Palestinians.”
The Director General of the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Munir Al-Bursh, said yesterday that the Israeli army is committing massacres and imposing a siege on 3 hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip.
Al-Barsh added, in press statements: “The Israeli army brutally targeted civilians in the streets, homes, and shelter centers, resulting in martyrs and wounded.”
He explained, “The army imposes a siege on the Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda, and Indonesian hospitals, north of the Gaza Strip, and demands their evacuation, and prevents the entry of medical supplies and food to medical teams and patients.”
He pointed out that running out of fuel in the three hospitals in northern Gaza heralds a health disaster, especially for children in intensive care.
In turn, a UN official warned that the evacuation orders recently issued by the Israeli army for large areas of northern Gaza, in addition to the intensive ground operations it is launching, threaten more death, destruction, and mass displacement of civilians.
Lisa Dowton, Director of the Finance and Partnerships Department at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said in a briefing she gave on Wednesday evening at a session held before the Security Council: “Evacuation orders are supposed to be aimed at protecting civilians, but what is happening is exactly the opposite.” Stressing that “there is no safe place in Gaza.”
She added, “Gaza has become home to the largest group of amputee children in modern history,” noting that “pregnant women are three times more likely to suffer a miscarriage and are three times more likely to die from birth complications.”
Yesterday, the health authorities in Gaza announced that 83 Palestinians were killed and 220 others were injured during the past 24 hours.
In addition, the Regional Director for Media at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the Middle East and North Africa, Ammar Ammar, told Al-Ittihad that the situation of children in the Gaza Strip continues to deteriorate as a result of the continuing attacks on schools and shelter sites for displaced people.
Ammar explained that the Israeli strikes included the entire sector, and that no place was considered safe, and that the ongoing evacuation orders forced families to move repeatedly.
The UN official continued that the areas to which residents are fleeing, especially Al-Mawasi and Deir Al-Balah, lack basic necessities, especially safety, and families are forced to seek shelter in temporary tents, damaged buildings, and schools that have been converted into shelters.
He stressed that basic services are almost non-existent, the Gaza Strip lacks facilities and water, and thousands of children are at risk of death due to the lack of humanitarian aid, noting that the daily volume of humanitarian aid entering Gaza has decreased by 56%.
In turn, the World Food Program complained yesterday that it was no longer able to distribute food in the North Gaza Governorate in light of the shortage of supplies.
The World Food Program said in a statement: “We are no longer able to distribute food in any way in the North Gaza Governorate.”
He added, “The lack of supplies in Gaza forces us to stop distributing food parcels during this October.”
The United Nations program added: “There is no distribution of food parcels, and bakeries in southern and central Gaza are running out of flour.”
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