'Crime against humanity': Israeli forces fire at civilians inside Al-Shifa hospital

News Network
November 15, 2023

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The general director of hospitals in the Gaza Strip says Israeli troops have fired at people inside the al-Shifa hospital during their raid on the largest medical complex in the besieged enclave.

Munir al-Bursh said that those targeted were trying to leave the hospital corridor, which was earlier declared as safe to exit.

“Not a single bullet was fired from inside the hospital during the occupation forces’ storming of the complex,” he told the Al Jazeera TV network on Wednesday,

Bursh also said that Israeli soldiers entered the surgical and emergency buildings located within the al-Shifa hospital complex and searched its basement.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Israeli military announced that it was “carrying out a precise and targeted operation” inside the al-Shifa hospital.

Reports said the occupation soldiers, tanks and bulldozers entered the facility, where around 7,000 people are sheltering, along with 1,500 patients and medical staff.

The Palestinian Hamas movement issued a statement in response to the occupation’s crimes in al-Shifa Hospital, saying, “We hold the occupying regime and its neo-Nazi leaders and US President Joe Biden fully responsible for the consequences of the attack on the al-Shifa medical complex.”

The Palestinian resistance movement Islamic Jihad said, in a statement, that “the United States is complicit in the occupation’s crime in al-Shifa hospital. The occupying regime, which had no military achievements in Gaza, wants to take revenge on civilians and patients.”

Over the past few days, the Israeli military has launched airstrikes on the hospital and encircled it in defiance of calls to respect the sanctity of medical centers.

The hospital ran out of fuel at the weekend to power generators, resulting in the death of dozens of patients, including premature babies.

Wednesday’s raid came just hours after White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters – without providing evidence – that Washington has “information” that Hamas is using Gaza hospitals, including al-Shifa.

Hamas said the US had given Israel “a green light … to commit more massacres against civilians” by supporting Israel’s “false narrative” that the resistance group was using the al-Shifa hospital as a command and control base.

It further said both Israel and the United States are to blame for the raid that amounted to a “barbaric crime against a medical facility protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

“The silence of the United Nations and the betrayal of many countries and regimes will not deter our Palestinian people from clinging to their land and their legitimate national rights,” Hamas emphasized.

Israel waged the bloody war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the usurping entity.

Since the start of the war, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 11,500 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured over 29,000 others.

It has also imposed a “complete siege” on the coastal sliver, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

Hospital raid ‘crime against humanity’

The Palestinian Authority’s Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said that Israel was committing a “new crime against humanity, medical staff and patients” by carrying out a military operation inside the hospital.

“We hold the occupation forces fully responsible for the lives of the medical staff, patients and displaced people in al-Shifa,” she said in a statement published by the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

The raid, Kaila noted, could have “catastrophic consequences” for patients and medical staff.

Israel alleges that Hamas has built its headquarters in bunkers and tunnels under the al-Shifa hospital, a claim strongly rejected by the Palestinian resistance movement and hospital staff.

“We don’t know what they will do to us. We don’t know whether they will kill people or terrorize them. We know all the propaganda is lies, and they know as well as we do that there is nothing at al-Shifa Medical Centre,” said Ahmed El Mokhallalati, a surgeon inside the al-Shifa hospital.

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News Network
November 12,2024

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The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement says its fighters have killed at least 20 Israeli soldiers in northern parts of the besieged Gaza Strip in just two days, in retaliation for the occupying regime’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory.

In a statement on Monday evening, Hamas said that fighters of its military wing, al-Qassam Brigades, “killed at least five occupation soldiers” in northern parts of the coastal territory earlier in the day.

It added that Hamas fighters also killed 15 Israeli soldiers in the war-ravaged region on Sunday.

The resistance movement’s “qualitative operation … confirms once again the failure of the criminal Zionist entity to suppress and eradicate the Palestinian resistance, which continues to direct qualitative strikes against its terrorist soldiers,” Hamas further said on its Telegram channel.

Palestinians have increased their resistance operations in the face of intensified Israeli aggression in northern Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 over the past weeks.

“Our valiant resistance is waging a war of attrition with the criminal enemy, inflicting daily losses on its soldiers and vehicles, and all of [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s bets and dreams of achieving any of his goals are failing,” the Gaza-based resistance movement added.

Hamas also vowed that Israel’s ongoing crimes and aggression against Gaza would be met with increased resistance and painful strikes, which will continue until the aggression against Palestinians ends and the regime fully withdraws from the blockaded territory.

As the war in Gaza enters its 14th month, the Health Ministry reports that Israeli attacks have killed at least 43,603 Palestinians and wounded 102,929 others.

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News Network
November 10,2024

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The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.

The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.

It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.

The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”

“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.

Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.

The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.

The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.

At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.

As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.

They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.

Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.

Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."

The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.

"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."

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News Network
November 14,2024

Bengaluru: Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar on Thursday backed Chief Minister Siddaramaiah over his claim that the BJP had offered Rs 50 crore each to 50 Congress MLAs in an attempt to "topple" the state government.

Addressing reporters here, Shivakumar, also the Congress state president, said, “The BJP indeed lured 50 Congress MLAs with Rs 50 crore each.”

He defended Siddaramaiah’s statement and said the Congress MLAs were briefed about the BJP’s alleged 'Operation Lotus', a term used to describe the BJP's attempts to destabilise ruling governments through horse-trading.

“Some of our MLAs informed the Chief Minister about this matter, and he, in turn, shared it with the media,” Shivakumar said.

At an event in Mysuru, Siddaramaiah reiterated the claim that "none of the Congress MLAs had accepted the offer".

He also accused the BJP of filing false cases against him in a bid to "remove him and overthrow his government".

The BJP has yet to respond to the allegations.

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