Nidal al-Mughrabi
Israel is facing mounting international pressure, including from the United States and France, to do more to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza as the death toll rises and fighting intensifies near and around hospitals.
The number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombardment of the coastal enclave in the past five weeks rose above 11,000, according to Gaza health officials yesterday.
At the same time, a spokesperson for Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities had been revised down to about 1200 from a previous government estimate of 1400. About 240 were taken hostage by Hamas, while 39 soldiers have been killed in combat since.
Israel spokesperson Lior Haiat said the revised death count, which included foreigners, ‘‘is not a final number. It [is] an updated estimate. It might change when [they] identify all the bodies’’.
More than 100 United Nations employees have been killed in the conflict, the UN Palestinian refugee agency said, making it the deadliest conflict ever for the UN in such a short period of time. The Committee to Protect Journalists said at least 40 journalists and media workers were among the dead – 35 Palestinian, four Israeli, and one Lebanese. Three were reported missing.
In his strongest comments to date on civilian suffering, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the number of Palestinians killed. On a visit to India he welcomed the four-hour humanitarian Israeli pauses that the White House announced the day before but told reporters more action was needed to protect Gaza’s civilians.
‘‘Far too many Palestinians have been killed; far too many have suffered these past weeks’’.
But Blinken reaffirmed American support for Israel’s campaign to ensure that Gaza could no longer be used ‘‘as a platform for launching terrorism’’.
French President Emmanuel Macron, in a BBC interview, said Israel must stop bombing Gaza and killing civilians. France, he said, ‘‘clearly condemns’’ the ‘‘terrorist’’ actions of Hamas, but that while recognising Israel’s right to protect itself, ‘‘we do urge them to stop this bombing’’ in Gaza.
In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said world leaders should be condemning Hamas, and not Israel. ‘‘These crimes that Hamas [is] committing today in Gaza will be committed tomorrow in Paris, New York and anywhere in the world,’’ Netanyahu said.
Israel has said that Hamas militants would exploit a truce to regroup if there were a ceasefire.
Fighting intensified into yesterday near Gaza City’s overcrowded hospitals, which Palestinian officials said had been hit by explosions and gunfire.
‘‘Israel is now launching a war on Gaza City hospitals,’’ said Mohammad Abu Selmeyah, director of Al Shifa hospital
He said later that at least 25 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on Al-Buraq school in Gaza City, where people whose homes had been destroyed were sheltering.
Gaza officials said missiles also landed in a courtyard of Shifa, the enclave’s biggest hospital, in the early hours of Friday, damaged the Indonesian Hospital and reportedly set fire to the Nasser Rantissi paediatric cancer hospital.
Israel’s military said later that a misfired projectile launched by Palestinian militants in Gaza had hit Shifa. The hospitals, filled with displaced people as well as patients and medical staff, are in northern Gaza, where Israel says the Hamas militants are concentrated.
Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy said the Hamas headquarters was in Shifa hospital’s basement, which meant the facility could lose its protected status and become a legitimate target. Israel says Hamas hides weapons in tunnels under hospitals, charges Hamas denies.
World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said health workers the group was in contact with at Shifa had been forced to leave in search of safety.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said Israel had bombed Shifa hospital buildings five times.
‘‘One Palestinian was killed and several were wounded in the early morning attack,’’ he said by phone. Videos verified by Reuters showed panic and people covered in blood.