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The Gaza Strip’s Hamas leadership on Friday stated that an Israeli airstrike on the territory’s biggest hospital killed 13 people, news agency AFP reported. A government statement reported “thirteen martyrs and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on Al-Shifa compound today” in central Gaza City, citing a toll that AFP could not independently verify. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital, stated that “Israeli tanks fired on Al-Shifa hospital,” but the Israeli military did not respond immediately.
On Thursday, Israel claimed intense battle near the hospital, claiming to have killed dozens of terrorists and damaged tunnels critical to Hamas’s ability to fight.
The Israeli army has regularly accused Hamas of utilising hospitals, notably Al-Shifa, to coordinate assaults against the army as well as to hide its commanders.
Hamas officials and physicians dispute the allegations.
After Hamas fighters flooded across the border on October 7, Israel started an offensive in Gaza, killing over 1,400 people, primarily civilians, and seizing around 240 captives.
Israel replied, pledging to destroy Hamas, with an aerial and ground assault that has killed more than 10,800 people, largely civilians and many of them children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Abu Mohammad, 32, had sought safety at the hospital with 15 relatives following the bombing of his area in Gaza City’s northeast.
“There is no safe place left. The army hit Al-Shifa. I don’t know what to do,” he was quoted by AFP in its report. “There is shooting… at the hospital. We are afraid to go out,” he added.
Witnesses claimed tanks encircled some other hospitals in Gaza City as combat raged on, driving hundreds of thousands of civilians to escape to the territory’s south in recent weeks.
At daybreak, AFPTV images showed a flare and smoke billowing above the city. Sounds of suspected gunshots and explosions could be heard early Friday.
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