At least 200 people were killed on the evening of Tuesday, October 17, in the bombing of a hospital in Gaza City, sparking strong reactions abroad on the eleventh day of the war triggered by the unprecedented Hamas attack against Israel.
The Islamist movement, in power in Gaza, accused Israel of being behind this strike, but the Israeli army strongly denies, attributing the bombing to a rocket attack from Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian armed group, allied of Hamas.
“According to intelligence information, based on several sources we have obtained, Islamic Jihad is responsible for the failed rocket attack that hit the hospital,” the IDF said in a statement. “We will provide proof of our assertions in the coming hours,” Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for the Israeli army, said during a press briefing later that night.
“At the time of the shooting, we were not carrying out any air operations near the hospital and the rockets that hit the building did not match ours,” he said, adding that the army would also provide “the conversations in Arabic which indicate that Islamic Jihad” was the perpetrator of the shooting.
Islamic Jihad called Israel’s accusations “lies.” “As usual, the Zionist enemy is trying, through fabrication of lies, to evade responsibility for the brutal massacre it committed by bombing the hospital and pointing the finger at Islamic Jihad,” said in a press release the Palestinian Islamist movement. According to him, the hospital had been ordered by Israel to evacuate under threat of bombing
Demonstrations in the Muslim world
“Hundreds of victims are still in the rubble” of the Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza, where “200 to 300” people died, according to the health ministry of the Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas.
“We were operating in the hospital, there was a loud explosion and the ceiling fell on the operating room. It’s a massacre,” said Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, a doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières, quoted in a press release from the NGO.
The announcement of the attack on this hospital where many Gazans took refuge to escape Israeli bombings sparked outraged reactions around the world. The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem, which runs the stricken hospital, condemned a “brutal” attack that occurred “during Israeli strikes,” denouncing a “crime against humanity.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators took to the streets in Amman, Beirut, Tehran, Baghdad and Istanbul. In Tunis, more than 3,000 people gathered in front of the French embassy, ??criticizing Paris for being Israel’s ally.
In Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, clashes broke out on Tuesday evening between demonstrators calling for the departure of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his security forces.
Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, called for observing a “day of anger” on Wednesday. The call came as clashes broke out between Lebanese security forces and demonstrators, gathered in front of the US embassy in Awkar, in the northern suburbs of the capital Beirut, where they chanted “death to death.” America” and “death to Israel.”
Expected in Israel on Wednesday, American President Joe Biden spoke “immediately after hearing the news” of the strike on the hospital with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and King Abdullah II of Jordan. Mr. Biden said he was “outraged and deeply saddened by the explosion” and “the terrible losses that resulted.” He also said he had asked his advisers to “continue to gather information on what exactly happened.”
Jordan summit postponed indefinitely
For its part, Jordan postponed indefinitely the quadripartite summit which was to bring together the American president and the leaders of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday in Amman. The meeting will be held “when the decision to stop the war and put an end to these massacres is taken,” said the head of Jordanian diplomacy, Ayman Safadi, who blamed Israel for the shooting.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said he was “horrified” by the “hundreds of Palestinian civilians killed in a strike” on the hospital, which he “strongly condemned” but without attributing responsibility to anyone. responsibility.
Similarly, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the hospital strike and stressed that “nothing can justify targeting civilians.” He also called for access to the Gaza Strip to be opened “without delay” for humanitarian aid.
The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, deplored that “once again, innocent civilians are paying the highest price”. “Responsibility for this crime must be clearly established and its perpetrators must be held accountable,” he wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
In the Arab world, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi condemned in the strongest terms “the Israeli bombing” of the hospital, which resulted in “the deaths of hundreds of innocent victims” among Palestinian citizens. He called the “deliberate bombing” a “clear violation of international law.” As for Saudi Arabia, it denounced a “violation of all international laws and norms”, denouncing Israel’s continuation of “attacks against civilians”.
Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the head of the Cairo-based Arab League, called on Tuesday “the West to immediately end the tragedy” in Gaza. “Our Arab mechanisms record war crimes, and their perpetrators will not be able to escape justice,” he warned.
Blaming Israel, Iranian President Ebrahim Raïssi declared a day of “public mourning” on Wednesday and predicted that the attack on the hospital would backfire on Israel and its American ally. “The flames of the American-Israeli bombs, dropped this evening on the wounded Palestinian victims in the hospital (…) in Gaza, will soon devour the Zionists,” declared Mr. Raïssi.
“111 medical infrastructures” bombed, says WHO
Since the start of the war on October 7, triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas against Israel, which left more than 1,400 dead and 199 hostages according to the Israeli army, the Jewish state has bombarded the Gaza Strip daily, swearing to eliminate the Islamist movement. Israeli strikes have already killed more than 3,000 people, mostly civilians, including hundreds of children, according to local authorities.
The World Health Organization (WHO) had already identified on Monday in Gaza “111 medical infrastructures” targeted, “12 healthcare professionals killed and 60 ambulances targeted”. At least six people taking refuge in a UN school were also killed in an Israeli raid on Tuesday, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
Water and food are also lacking for the 2.4 million Gazans, also deprived of electricity, after the siege imposed by Israel on October 9 on the small Palestinian territory, already subject to a land, sea and air blockade since the capture of Hamas’s power in 2007.
