Jordan says southern Gaza hospital badly damaged by Israel shelling nearby

Israel stepped up its assault on Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on Wednesday, pushing tanks westwards and prompting accusations from Jordan that its field hospital in the city had been badly damaged by nearby shelling, Reuters reports.

The Jordanian army said it held Israel responsible for a “flagrant breach of international law” in what it said was the damage to the facility as a result of Israeli shelling in the vicinity. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

People in and around another hospital, Nasser, fled as tanks approached the district overnight following an Israeli army statement that it had come under fire from the area.

Palestinian health officials said seven people were killed by Israeli air strikes that damaged homes near the hospital, one of only a third of Gaza’s hospitals still partially operational.

Israeli government spokesman, Eylon Levy, said extra field hospitals were expected to be up and running in the coming days.

READ: Gaza post-war housing reconstruction to cost ‘at least $15bn’

“These have of course been necessitated by Hamas’s strategic militarisation of Gaza’s existing hospitals,” he said, adding this showed that Hamas were the ones breaching international law. Hamas denies using hospitals for cover.

Explosions from shelling and air strikes sounded further west in Khan Yunis as the Israeli tanks moved on, with lines of thick black smoke rising from bomb sites. Witnesses said tanks and bulldozers had damaged a cemetery there before retreating to the city centre again.

Israel said it had killed six Palestinian fighters, including the southern district Hamas officer in charge of interrogating suspected spies.

The military said in a statement summarising its latest operations that the killing of counter-espionage officer, Bilal Nofal, “significantly impacts the terrorist organisation’s capacity to develop and enhance its capabilities”.

‘Missiles falling on us’ 

Further south in Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people have moved on Israeli advice, people cried over several shrouded bodies, including of a young girl, Masa.

“We were asleep and then we found the missiles falling on us. We got up and couldn’t see anything. We started checking on each other. The girl was martyred,” said her aunt, Tahreer Shoman, adding that her siblings had been wounded, but survived.

Fighting raged in densely populated Jabalia in northern Gaza on Wednesday, a day after Israeli tanks stormed back into parts of the north they had left last week.

Israel had announced in early January it was scaling back operations in northern Gaza as part of what it said would be a more targeted approach in its war against Hamas after operations that flattened entire residential districts.

Communications were down across Gaza on Wednesday for a sixth day, leaving its Palestinian inhabitants, most of whom have been forced to flee several times, unable to receive warnings on social media from the movement of Israeli forces.

The lack of local mobile phone signals also robs people trapped in the rubble left by Israeli air strikes of the means to call for help.

READ: Palestinians in northern Gaza inspect extent of damage inflicted by Israeli troops

Palestinian health officials said 163 Gazans had been reported killed over the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 24,448 in Israel’s war on Gaza, now in its fourth month.

Israel reported two more soldiers killed, taking the toll since it began ground operations in Gaza to 193.

Israel says it has killed 9,000 Hamas militants and has vowed to “eliminate” the enclave’s Hamas rulers after gunmen stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. On Wednesday, Israel adjusted the number of people it says were seized on 7 October to 253 from 240.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Hostages 

Around half of the hostages were released in an October truce during which some Palestinian prisoners were also freed.

Israel has said the only way to secure the release of the remaining hostages is military pressure on Hamas.

But White House National Security spokesman, John Kirby, said on Tuesday “intensive discussions” took place in Qatar on a possible deal and Washington hoped they would bear fruit “soon”.

Qatar and France have brokered a separate deal with Israel and Hamas to deliver urgent medication to some 45 Israeli hostages held by the group in Gaza, in return for humanitarian and medical aid for the most vulnerable civilians.

The aid left Qatar for Egypt on Wednesday and was due to be taken across the Rafah Border Crossing later in the day.

UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said on Wednesday parties to the war in Gaza were “trampling” on international law and reiterated calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

“The world is standing by as civilians, mostly women and children, are killed, maimed, bombarded, forced from their homes and denied access to humanitarian aid,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Survival has become a full-time occupation for Gazans, with queues forming before dawn for scarce food and drinking water.

“Today the war is psychological, a war of fear, a war on food, war on clean water,” said Shadi Al-Natoor, who fled his home in Gaza City in the north early in the war.

Israel has also conducted repeated raids of the Occupied West Bank, where it said air strikes on cars in Nablus and Tulkarm had killed nine Palestinians it described as gunmen who had carried out or were planning imminent attacks.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said 360 people have been killed and thousands arrested in raids Israel says are aimed at rooting out militants there.

READ: Aid for Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians arrives at Gaza border