The Anglican bishop of Jerusalem said a Gaza City hospital run by the Episcopal Church had received at least three Israeli military orders to evacuate that staff members refused to heed before a lethal Tuesday night explosion
Published Date – 06:00 PM, Wed – 18 October 23
Palestinians pull dead from the building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Bureij refugee camp Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023. AP/PTI
Jerusalem: The Anglican bishop of Jerusalem said a Gaza City hospital run by the Episcopal Church had received at least three Israeli military orders to evacuate that staff members refused to heed before a lethal Tuesday night explosion.
The Israeli army delivered the warnings by phone beginning Sunday after Israeli shelling hit two floors of the al-Ahli Hospital hospital, Bishop Hosam Naoum said.
Naoum refused to assign blame for the blast, and urged the public to focus on the wider destruction and deaths unfolding in Gaza. “As people of the cloth, we are not military experts,” he said. “We just want to let people see what is happening on the ground and hope that people will come to the conclusion that we’ve had enough of this war.”
Naoum said the blast at the hospital also ripped through a church at the centre of a courtyard where Palestinians had taken refuge. He said the casualties were “in the hundreds” based on reports he heard from local staff.
Palestinian diplomat accuses Israel of intentionally bombing Gaza hospital
Beirut: Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki accused Israel of “intentionally” bombing a hospital in Gaza and said the strip’s residents are being subjected to genocide.
Malki, who spoke in Saudi Arabia during a Wednesday meeting of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, alleged the Israeli military had attacked the same hospital two days earlier and warned doctors there.
He added that he thinks the international community is allowing Israel to kill under the “slogan of self-defence”.
Malki asserted that Israeli bombing has killed 1,300 children in the Gaza Strip in past 11 days. Israel’s military
retaliated after Hamas militants broke through a border fence and killed more than 1,400 people in the country, according to Israeli authorities.
RED CROSS SAYS IT HAS 60 TONS OF AID READY FOR GAZA DELIVERY WHEN IT’S SAFE
Geneva: The International Committee of the Red Cross said it has mobilised a convoy carrying 60 tons of aid, including medical supplies, for deployment into Gaza, but it needs safe access to deliver them.
“The recent violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory is at a level that the ICRC has not witnessed in many years,” the Geneva-based humanitarian organization said in a statement Wednesday.
EGYPT’S PRESIDENT DECLARES NATIONAL MOURNING FOR VICTIMS OF GAZA HOSPITAL BLAST
Cairo: Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi declared three days of national mourning for those killed in the blast at al-Ahli Hospital and other Palestinians killed in the ongoing Hamas-Israel war.
In a statement on social media, El-Sissi blamed Israel for a deadly blast at a Gaza City hospital. The Hamas-led Health Ministry in Gaza says the blast killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians, many of whom were sheltering from Israeli airstrikes at the hospital.
GAZA HOSPITAL DIRECTOR MAKES URGENT APPEAL FOR WAR TO END
Gaza City: The director of al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza made an urgent and emotional appeal for an end to the latest Hamas-Israel war after a devastating blast there Tuesday night.
Speaking to The Associated Press by phone, Suhaila Tarazi said the grisly scenes she encountered in the aftermath of the explosion were “unlike anything I have ever seen or could ever imagine.” She was not at the hospital at at the time of the Tuesday night blast but described body parts of children strewn everywhere in the hospital and the courtyard.
“Our hospital is a place of love and reconciliation,” Tarazi said. “We are all losers in this war. And it must end.”
Tarazi declined to comment directly on the death toll reported by the Hamas-run Health Ministry of at least 500 victims. “It could be more, it could be less. There are so many body parts that no one can really tell.”
HAMAS SPOKESPERSON PRAISES CANCELLATION OF BIDEN SUMMIT
Beirut: A spokesperson for Hamas in Lebanon praised the decision to cancel a summit in Jordan between Arab governments and US President Joe Biden following a deadly hospital blast in Gaza.
Biden was supposed to meet with Jordanian, Egyptian, and Palestinian leaders on Wednesday in Amman in hopes of resolving the ongoing Gaza-Israel war.
Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan called for an immediate cease-fire, a humanitarian corridor into the blockaded Gaza Strip and the continuation of mass regional protests that took place after Tuesday night’s blast at the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City.
He also called for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Israel to “rise up against the Zionist enemy and clash with it in all cities, villages, and camps”.
