Bombings against an ambulance convoy left fifteen people dead on Friday November 3 in Gaza, deplored the Palestinian Red Crescent in a press release, a report also given by Hamas. The Israeli army confirmed a strike, explaining that it had targeted “a terrorist cell” of the armed Islamist movement which used the vehicle, which Hamas denied.
According to the Red Crescent press release, “the convoy consisted of five ambulances,” including four from the health ministry of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and one from the Palestinian humanitarian organization. Two ambulances were targeted by separate strikes, according to the same press release.
“I am horrified,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement, adding: “The images of the bodies strewn in the street outside the hospital are heartbreaking. » One of the strikes occurred in front of the gates of Al-Shifa hospital, the other one kilometer from the hospital.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, the convoy had been authorized by the territory’s health ministry to leave Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in order to evacuate victims of bombings to Egypt. But after four kilometers of road, the convoy found itself blocked by debris and stones caused by bombings. He therefore turned around but, “when he was only one kilometer from Al-Shifa hospital, the leading ambulance was targeted by a missile (…), injuring the caregivers like the injured people inside the ambulance.”
“A serious violation of the Geneva Convention”
After this strike, the rest of the convoy continued on its way to Al-Shifa hospital, but while the Red Crescent ambulance was dropping off a patient there, it in turn “was hit by a missile fired by Israeli forces while she was less than two meters from the hospital gate.” An Agence France-Presse correspondent saw several bodies and injured people next to a damaged ambulance.
The Red Crescent condemned these bombings, recalling that “the deliberate targeting of medical teams constitutes a serious violation of the Geneva Convention.” The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was “deeply shocked”, declaring on X that “patients, caregivers, establishments and ambulances must be protected by all the time. Always “.
Israeli aircraft “struck an ambulance which was identified by the forces as being used by a Hamas terrorist cell near their position in the combat zone,” the Israeli army justified in a statement.
Israel’s statements “on the presence of fighters inside the targeted ambulances are false, and they are new lies added to the constant lies (…) used to justify its crimes”, Hamas denied in a press release published on Telegram. For his part, the spokesperson for the Gaza Ministry of Health assures that the ambulance was indeed part of a convoy which transported “several injured people on their way to be hospitalized in Egypt”.
Seventeen injured evacuated to Egypt on Friday
Since Wednesday, dozens of wounded Palestinians have been evacuated from the Gaza Strip to Egypt via Rafah. On Friday, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Health, “17 injured people were evacuated while twenty-eight were supposed to be evacuated, due to the events”, a reference to the strikes against ambulances. The day before, 60 injured Palestinians and some 400 foreigners had left Gaza via the crossing point.
Early Saturday, Hamas also claimed that 20 people were killed and dozens more injured in an attack “targeting” a school transformed into a makeshift camp for displaced people in the Al-Saftaoui area, in the northern Gaza Strip.
Incessant Israeli bombardments have killed more than 9,200 people, including 3,826 children, in Gaza, according to the Hamas health ministry – a count that could not be independently verified – since the Islamist movement’s attack. armed against Israel which left more than 1,400 dead.
Adding to concerns about the fate of civilians, Israel began on Friday to send back to the Gaza Strip, despite the bombings, thousands of Palestinian workers who had been stuck on its soil for almost a month.