French President Emmanuel Macron “urges Israel to stop” the bombings killing civilians in Gaza, in an interview with the BBC broadcast Friday evening, November 10. “We share [Israel’s] pain. And we share their desire to get rid of terrorism,” he recalls. But “de facto, today, civilians are being bombed. These babies, these women, these old people are being bombed and killed.” There is “no justification” and “no legitimacy for this,” he stressed.
The health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip announced Friday that 11,078 people, including 4,506 children, have been killed in Israeli bombardments of the Palestinian enclave since the start of the war sparked by Hamas. he bloody attack by the Islamist movement against Israel on October 7.
This “reaction in the fight against terrorism, because it is led by a democracy, must be consistent with the international rules of war and international humanitarian law,” argued the French president.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to respond to Mr. Macron’s comments, saying that “responsibility for any harm done to civilians lies with Hamas,” which started the war with the massacres of October 7 and which uses civilians as “human shields.”
Asked about a possible violation of international law by Israel, Emmanuel Macron stressed that he was “not a judge” but “a head of state”. He also expressed concern that the “massive bombing” of Gaza would create “resentment” in the region.
This interview comes the day after a “humanitarian conference” organized Thursday in Paris at the initiative of the French president, during which he called for “working toward a ceasefire.” “There is no other solution than a humanitarian pause first” to move towards a “ceasefire, which will protect all civilians who have nothing to do with the terrorists,” he insisted on Friday.
Israel denies hitting Al-Shifa hospital
On Friday, Hamas reported 13 dead in a strike on the Al-Shifa hospital complex in Gaza City, the largest in the territory, a toll that cannot be independently verified. Hamas attributed the strike to Israel, as did hospital director Mohammed Abou Salmiya. Claims denied Friday evening by the Jewish state. Israel claimed on -Shifa.” According to the army, “the failed projectile was aimed at IDF troops operating nearby.”
The Israeli army announced Thursday evening that one of its divisions was carrying out major operations in an area “very very close” to Al-Shifa hospital. She also argued Friday that she would “kill” Hamas fighters “who fire from hospitals” in Gaza.
“All hospitals in Gaza City were targeted” on Friday by the Israeli army, the director of Al-Shifa hospital told Agence France-Presse. He also assured that the hospital had received “around fifty bodies after the bombing on Friday morning of a school” in the town hosting displaced people. For its part, the Palestinian Red Crescent claimed that Israeli snipers fired on Al-Quds hospital on Friday, reporting at least one dead and twenty-eight injured.
The health system in the Gaza Strip is “on its knees,” the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the UN Security Council on Friday, noting that half of the 36 hospitals in the enclave were “no longer functioning at all”.
“The situation on the ground is impossible to describe: hospital corridors piled up with wounded, sick and dying people, overflowing morgues, surgeries without anesthesia, tens of thousands of people taking refuge in hospitals,” declared Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
According to him, the WHO has counted “more than 250 attacks” on the health sector in Gaza and the West Bank since the start of the war, and 25 against the health sector in Israel. “In the last forty-eight hours alone, four hospitals have been put out of service” in Gaza, alarmed the head of the WHO, who again called for “a humanitarian ceasefire”.
1,200 dead in October 7 attack, according to new report
For his part, the director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, called on Friday for an end to the “carnage” in the Gaza Strip. “Razing entire neighborhoods is not a response to the heinous crimes committed by Hamas. Instead, it creates a new generation of aggrieved Palestinians who are likely to perpetuate the cycle of violence,” he said.
According to the United States, Israel agreed to make daily humanitarian “pauses” to allow civilians to flee the northern Gaza Strip, where the fighting is most intense, to the South. This road was still used by 30,000 people on Friday despite “explosions” which caused deaths there, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). On Friday, several tens of thousands of civilians headed towards the South, says the Israeli army.
According to OCHA, the number of displaced people stands at 1.6 million people out of the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. The narrow territory has been deprived of water, electricity, food and medicine due to the total siege imposed by Israel since October 9. Attacks whose death toll has been reassessed at 1,200, mostly civilians, compared to 1,400 previously, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. A ministry spokesperson said this was “an updated estimate”, without providing an explanation for the new figure.