Israeli forces have unleashed a new wave of attacks on Gaza, striking areas near some of the few hospitals still functioning, while their ground assault on Gaza City leaves a mounting civilian toll.
At least 83 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces on Thursday, medical officials told Al Jazeera.
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Missiles struck areas around al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals, disrupting some of the last fragile lifelines left for the starving, sick and wounded. At least 15 people were killed outside al-Shifa, while four more died in a separate attack near al-Ahli.
Hamas condemned the assaults as a “full-fledged war crime”, noting they came “less than 24 hours after the release of a new UN report documenting the occupation’s commission of the crime of genocide against our people”.
The group said the strikes amounted to “a blatant message of defiance and blatant contempt for the international community”.
The UK’s Middle East minister, Hamish Falconer, said he was “horrified” by the overnight bombardment of another hospital, al-Rantisi, which tends to injured children in Gaza. “Babies in incubators and children on dialysis should not be under bombardment,” he posted on social media.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the children’s hospital was struck three times, forcing 40 patients to flee. Another 40 remained trapped inside with staff.
‘Medicide’
Doctors Without Borders (MSF), meanwhile, mourned the death of one of its own. Hussein Alnajjar, a nurse and father of three, died of shrapnel wounds after an Israeli strike near his tent. He had been working with MSF clinics in Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis since early 2024.
The United Nations inquiry published earlier this week that declared Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide also highlighted Israel’s destruction of the Al Basma IVF centre – which obliterated 4,000 embryos and 1,000 sperm and egg samples, calling it “a measure intended to prevent births among Palestinians in Gaza”, and one of the acts defined as genocide under the 1948 convention.
The UN say such patterns are a systematic campaign to dismantle Gaza’s health sector, which they describe as “medicide” – the killing of health workers and destruction of hospitals to wipe out medical care in the enclave.
Assault on Gaza City
Of Thursday’s 83 reported deaths, 61 were recorded in Gaza City, where Israel is pressing ahead with its ground offensive after approving a plan in August to seize the city.
Residents describe bombardment on an unprecedented scale, with tanks, jets and naval boats flattening homes. Earlier this week, the UN Human Rights Office denounced Israel’s “wanton destruction” as “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.
Among the dead were a child and his mother, killed when their apartment in the Shati refugee camp was bombed.
“The future feels destroyed – no one knows what to do,” displaced resident Abed Alaleem Wahdan told Al Jazeera. “The bombing is everywhere, even in the south.”
Israel has designated al-Mawasi in southern Gaza a “safe zone”, but it too has come under attack. Health officials warn the area lacks “basic necessities of life, including water, food [and] health services,” and disease is spreading in overcrowded camps.
Families face “direct targeting and killing both inside the camps and when attempting to leave them”, the Health Ministry has said.
Despite the danger, hundreds of thousands have risked returning north, only to find their homes reduced to rubble. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported Israeli forces detonated 10 booby-trapped armoured vehicles in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood.
The UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA) has warned that famine in northern Gaza is deepening, with aid convoys to the north cut off since the Zikim crossing was closed on September 12.
Since October 2023, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 65,062 Palestinians and wounded 165,697, according to the Health Ministry. Thousands more remain buried beneath the rubble.