Israel surrounded Nasser hospital, Hamas argues

His operations continue on Tuesday night (26.03.2024) his troops surrounded Nasser’s band in the town of Han Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, according to the health ministry of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement and eyewitnesses. Dozens of armored personnel and tanks of Israel have been deployed in the hospital area since the morning, according to eyewitnesses, who spoke of fire. “The army (Israel) besieged the Nasser hospital complex,” the health ministry said in a statement, reporting on operations around it in preparation for “an attack on health, technical and administrative personnel and thousands of displaced people still present inside.” Tank movements around the complex had already been reported Sunday by the Palestinian Red Crescent. When a comment was asked by the French Agency, the Israeli army did not respond. Since the outbreak of the war between Israel’s army and Hamas on October 7, with an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement in southern areas of Israeli territory, Israeli forces have often conducted operations in hospitals in the Gaza Strip, assuring they are looking for Palestinian militants. A similar operation began on 18 March around and inside the Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the largest of the enclave, where Israel’s army announced 170 “fighters” of Palestinian armed organizations were killed. In Han Eunice, the al Amal hospital, about a mile from Nasser, comparatively smaller, was also targeted from Sunday. It is now “out of operation”, it has “stopped functioning completely,” said the Palestinian Red Crescent yesterday, as the Israeli army removed those who were there and blocked the entrances with debris. The relief organization, in its communication, embellishes the fact that “the international community does not provide the necessary protection” to its groups, patients and wounded and violently displaced. According to the same source, two people were killed by bullets, a patient, and a volunteer on Sunday, during transit. Asked in this respect, Israel’s army gave no evidence of the incident. In a statement made public last Tuesday night at the same time in Geneva and Beirut, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Associations (DOSES) stressed that “the suspension of most hospitals in the North (the Gaza Strip) due to acute fuel shortages, the absence of drugs and medical equipment and the lack of safe access was disastrous.” “The forced closure of al Amal hospital, one of the few remaining medical facilities in the south, has profound consequences, endangering countless lives,” is added to the text. DOSSIA ‘calls on all parties to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law, guaranteeing the protection of civilians, health personnel and health facilities’. Al Kudz hospital in Gaza suffered the same fate in November, according to the Red Crescent, counting fifteen of its dead members since the outbreak of the Israel/Hamas war and describing “responsible to the international community for the complete collapse of the health system” in the enclave, under the 4th Geneva Convention for the protection of civilians in wartime.