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Biden arrives in Israel for high-stakes wartime visit

19-10-2023

JERUSALEM: US President Joe Biden landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday hours after Israel launched a deadly airstrike on a hospital in Gaza City, martyring hundreds of Palestinians and drawing condemnations from world leaders.

Biden has expressed “iron-clad” support for Israel in its war against Hamas over the October 7 attacks and was welcomed on the tarmac by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but the horror of the hospital deaths threatened to derail his high-stakes visit, with Jordan cancelling a summit where King Abdullah II had been due to host Biden, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas said that an Israeli air strike destroyed the Gaza clinic, while Israel said a misfired rocket launched by the Islamic Jihad group had hit the Ahli Arab Hospital.

Between 200 and 300 people died, according to Gaza health authorities, while Hamas put the toll at more than 500 dead. Neither the Israeli nor the Palestinian accounts could be independently corroborated.

Middle East anger over the 12-day-old Gaza war, which has left thousands dead, has reached new heights after the hospital bloodshed, and protests against Israel were called in cities across much of the Arab and Muslim world.

Biden has strongly backed top ally Israel and its military campaign retaliation for the killing of 1,400 people who were shot, mutilated or burnt to death in shock cross-border attacks launched by Hamas on October 7.

Israel´s campaign to destroy Hamas and try to rescue 199 hostages from the besieged and blockaded territory had already left at least 3,000 dead inside Gaza before the hospital was destroyed.

Entire Gaza neighborhoods have been razed and survivors are left with dwindling supplies of food, water and fuel, unable to flee the 40-kilometre (25-mile) long strip that has been blockaded since 2007 by Israel and Egypt.

“The situation in Gaza is spiraling out of control,” UN World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “We need violence on all sides to stop.”

On the ground in Gaza, the blast at the Christian-run hospital brought new chaos and suffering Tuesday night, as the dead were pulled from the rubble and the wounded were rushed to nearby medical centres.

Scores of bodies cloaked in blood-stained sheets and white plastic wrap soon lined the floors at the nearby the Al-Shifa hospital, where stunned and bereaved relatives tried to identify loved ones. (Int’l News Desk)

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