[ad_1]
GAZA: Gaza health officials said 15 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on an ambulance that the military said targeted Hamas militants, and Washington’s top diplomat was due to hear Arab demands for a ceasefire in a meeting on Saturday (Nov 4) in Jordan.
The Israeli strike hit an ambulance that was part of a convoy carrying injured Palestinians at Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, health officials in the Hamas-run enclave said on Friday.
“Upon their arrival to Al-Shifa, (Israel) directly targeted the convoy’s second vehicle, committing a terrible massacre that claimed the lives of 15 (people) and wounded more than 60,” health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said.
Israel’s military said it had identified and hit an ambulance “being used by a Hamas terrorist cell” in the battle zone, and that a number of Hamas fighters were killed.
“We emphasize that this area is a battle zone. Civilians in the area are repeatedly called upon to evacuate southwards for their own safety,” the military said.
Hamas official Izzat El Reshiq said allegations its fighters were present were “baseless”. The Israeli military gave no evidence to support its assertion that the ambulance was linked to Hamas but said it intended to release additional information.
Reuters was unable to independently verify accounts from either side.
Israel resisted US calls for a pause in fighting and pressed its siege of Gaza City on Saturday, with another deadly strike hitting a school-turned-refugee shelter.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuffed pressure from visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to enact a temporary humanitarian truce, the nearly month-old war in Gaza raged unabated.
Israeli ground forces have encircled Gaza’s largest city, trying to rout Hamas in retaliation for the Oct 7 raids that killed an estimated 1,400 people inside Israel, most of them civilians.
At the Osama bin Zaid Boys School north of Gaza City, AFP saw the aftermath of what Hamas authorities said was tank shelling that killed 20 people.
Ambulance teams rushed into the debris-littered building to aid the injured and remove the dead.
Stunned onlookers wept and wandered the scene with hands clasped above the head in horror and disbelief.
A long row of clothes and washing still hung from windows on the building’s first storey, evidence that this school had become a temporary home for some of the hundreds of thousands of Gazans displaced by the war.
Israel’s military describes Gaza City as “the centre of the Hamas terror organisation”.
Israeli military spokesman Richard Hecht said forces were engaged in “close combat” with Hamas fighters who were armed “with anti-tank missiles, explosive devices and more”.
Israel says it is targeting Hamas operatives, weapons stores, tunnel complexes, drone launching posts and command centres.
But with strikes taking place in densely populated urban areas, many civilians have died.
Hamas-run health authorities claim more than 9,200 Gazans, mostly women and children, have been killed.
Speaking in Tel Aviv, Blinken accused Hamas of “cynically and monstrously” using civilians as human shields, and of deliberately locating military assets “beneath residential buildings, schools, mosques, hospitals”.
But a key focus of his trip was to convince Israel to enact “humanitarian pauses”, which the United States believes could help secure the release of roughly 240 hostages thought to be in Hamas captivity, and to allow aid to be distributed to Gaza’s beleaguered population.
Netanyahu, who has made a political career out of hawkish security policies, warned that there could be no “temporary truce” in Gaza until Hamas releases the hostages.
[ad_2]
Source link