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29-05-2024
RAFAH: The Gaza Strip’s collapsing health system is under further strain after the Israeli army intensified bombing in Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan area and other parts of the enclave, a day after an attack on a camp in Rafah killed 45 Palestinians.
The Indonesian Field Hospital is the latest medical facility in Rafah to be hit with the attack on Monday causing damage to the hospital’s upper floors.
Medical staff and patients are reportedly trapped inside the facility, where many Palestinian families are also taking shelter.
Earlier on Monday, Rafah’s Kuwait Specialty Hospital was forced to shut down after an Israeli attack just outside the gates of the hospital killed two of its medical staff.
Witnesses said the victims were hit by fire from an Israeli aircraft. The hospital was treating most of the 249 wounded in Israel’s attack on Sunday night on a camp for displaced people.
The director of the hospital, Dr Suhaib al-Hams, said the facility was put out of service over “Israeli occupation forces’ expansion of their military operation in Rafah and their repeated and deliberate attacks on the hospital and its vicinity”.
Dr Mohammed Tahir, an orthopedic surgeon who volunteered to work in Rafah’s European Gaza Hospital, told media the closure of Kuwait Specialty Hospital puts the people in Rafah in severe danger.
“What we’re experiencing here is a multipronged attack unfortunately where not only are the people being attacked directly, they are also being blocked from receiving critical medical services,” Tahir said.
“The Kuwaiti Hospital was evacuated that is the main hospital and they are moving to al-Mawasi, where they have a field hospital, which is not quite ready and in the meantime, quadcopters … are restricting the movements of ambulances, so those who are injured cannot even receive help,” he added.
In central Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians receiving care at Deir el-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital are also believed to be in imminent danger as the facility is on the verge of shutdown due to Israeli forces blocking its fuel supply.
Israeli forces have damaged, destroyed or occupied 24 hospitals in the Strip since October 7, leaving only six partially functioning facilities out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals.
Israel has been blocking lifesaving supplies reaching health facilities across the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war.
Gaza officials say the death toll from Israeli air strikes on a camp housing displaced Palestinians near Rafah in southern part of the strip has risen to 45.
The enclave’s health ministry on Monday said 45 people, including 23 women, children and elderly, were killed in the attack and 249 others wounded.
Witnesses said at least eight missiles struck the camp, a designated safe zone on Sunday night at about 8.45pm local time (17:45 GMT).
The Wafa news agency, quoting the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), said that many of those who died were “burned alive” inside their tents in the Tal as-Sultan area.
Sanad fact-checking agency said the attacks targeted the Brix camp to the west of the city of Rafah. An aerial photograph taken on May 24 shows hundreds of tents in the area, which was close to a UNRWA warehouse.
The Israeli attack followed Hamas’s first rocket attack on the Israeli city of Tel Aviv in months. Israel said the eight Hamas rockets were launched from the Rafah area, where its forces have continued a ground assault despite an order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to halt operations there.
The Israeli military said its air force struck a Hamas compound in Rafah and that the strike was carried out with “precise ammunition and on the basis of precise intelligence”. (Int’l News Desk)
