May 5, 2024
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces raided one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza’s north and bombarded the south with airstrikes, pressing ahead with their offensive Tuesday with renewed backing from the United States, despite rising international alarm.
The air and ground war, launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel, has killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians according to claims by the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza, displaced some 1.9 million, demolished much of northern Gaza and sparked attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets across the region.
Assaults on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have led major shipping companies — as well as the oil and gas giant BP — to suspend trade through the vital waterway, prompting the U.S. and its allies to launch a new mission to counter the threat.
After meeting with Israeli officials Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said protecting Palestinian civilians was “both a moral duty and a strategic imperative” for Israel. He also reiterated America's support for Israel in its war against Hamas, and said he was “not here to dictate timelines or terms.”
Israel says it is striking militant targets across the territory. The military said Tuesday it had killed a prominent Hamas financier in an airstrike on Rafah, without specifying when it occurred.
Fierce battles also raged in northern Gaza, which has been reduced to a wasteland seven weeks after Israeli tanks and troops stormed in.
Footage online showed a scene of devastation after a strike that hit a local charity in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, with several bodies near a donkey cart on a street filled with rubble and twisted metal. Munir al-Bursh, a senior Health Ministry official, claimed at least 27 people were killed in that strike and others in Jabaliya on Tuesday.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll since the start of the war had risen to more than 19,600. It does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.
Hamas has continued to put up stiff resistance and lob rockets at Israel. The militants said they fired a barrage toward Tel Aviv on Tuesday, and air raid sirens went off in central Israel. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
The war began after Hamas and other militants killed some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and abducted 240 others.
Israel’s military says 131 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive. Israel says it has killed thousands of militants, and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, saying it uses them as human shields when it fights in residential areas.
Israeli forces raided the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City overnight, according to the church that operates it, destroying a wall at its front entrance and detaining most of its staff.
The facility was the scene of an explosion early in the war that killed dozens of Palestinians, and which an Associated Press investigation later determined was likely caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket.
Don Binder, a pastor at St. George’s Anglican Cathedral, which runs the hospital, said the raid left just two doctors, four nurses and two janitors to tend to over 100 seriously wounded patients, with no running water or electricity.
“It has been a great mercy for the many wounded in Gaza City that we were able to keep our Ahli Anglican Hospital open for so long,” Binder wrote in a Facebook post late Monday. “That ended today.”
He said an Israeli tank was parked on the rubble at the hospital’s entrance, blocking anyone from entering or leaving.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Forces have raided other hospitals across Gaza, accusing Hamas of using them for military purposes.
The military said Tuesday that troops found an explosive device inside a clinic in Shijaiyah, a Gaza City neighborhood that has seen heavy fighting in recent days. It did not say whether the clinic was operational, and in footage released by the military it appeared to have been abandoned.
Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will keep fighting until it ends Hamas rule in Gaza, crushes its military capabilities and frees all the hostages taken during the Oct. 7 attack.
