ITV News – Oct 30, 2023

• The Palestinian Red Crescent has accused the Israeli military of deliberately striking an area close to the al-Quds hospital in the Gaza Strip
• 229 hostages are being held in Gaza, the Israeli ministry reports. Four have been released.
• The Palestinian death toll has passed 8,000 (most of them women and children) according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.
• More than 1,400 people died in Israel during attacks by Hamas, including at least 310 soldiers, according to the Israeli government.

The Palestinian Red Crescent has accused the Israeli military of deliberately striking an area close to a hospital in Gaza where around 14,000 people are sheltering.

The group said it received warnings from Israeli authorities to immediately evacuate the al-Quds hospital in the Gaza Strip on Sunday.

The Israeli military has not yet commented on the hospital evacuation order, but say they are targeting networks of Hamas tunnels that lie underneath hospitals, schools and mosques in Gaza.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said the hospital’s intensive care unit is predominantly occupied by children injured in the latest airstrikes.

Palestinians survey the ruins of a house in southern Gaza. Click to enlarge

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it’s impossible to evacuate patients without endangering their lives.

Overnight thousands of people broke into Gaza aid warehouses to take food and other “basic survival items,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said.

Thomas White, the agency’s director in Gaza, said that the break-in was “a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down” after three weeks of war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

As the death toll from the conflict soars, Save the Children said the number of children killed in the blockaded Gaza Strip since 7 October has exceeded the number of children killed in armed conflict every year globally since 2019.

Israeli airstrikes have hit areas around Gaza’s largest hospital, residents say, destroying roads leading to the facility, which is a major shelter for Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment.

The Israeli military has renewed allegations that top Hamas leaders and operatives have built underground bunkers below Shifa hospital and accused the militant group of using civilians as human shields.

Israel has not presented evidence, and Hamas denies the claims.

“Reaching the hospital has become increasingly difficult,” Mahmoud al-Sawah, who was sheltering in the hospital, said over the phone on Sunday. “It seems they want to cut off the area.”

In a statement, the charity cited numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry of at least 3,195 children killed in the conflict this month. It also mentioned the deaths of 33 children in the occupied West Bank and 29 children killed in Israel.

Tanks and infantry continued to push into Gaza over the weekend as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a “second stage” in the conflict.

Israel’s military, which has said repeatedly that it is not at war with civilians in Gaza but with Hamas, dropped leaflets on the Gaza Strip on Sunday asking civilians to “surrender.”

Written in Arabic, the leaflets told civilians to lay down all their weapons, put their hands up, wave white flags and follow instructions from the Israeli military.

“Hamas leaders are exploiting you,” the flyers read: “They and their families are in safe places, while you die in vain.”

The widening ground offensive comes as Israel hits Gaza from air, land and sea.

The bombardment – described by Gaza residents as the most intense of the war – knocked out most communications on Friday, cutting off the 2.3 million people living there from the world.

For more than 24 hours, people in the besieged Gaza Strip were not able to communicate with each other or seek help.

Communications were restored to many people in Gaza early Sunday, according to local telecoms companies, Internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmation on the ground.

Many residents, especially in the northern half of the strip, were not able to call ambulances to transfer injured people to hospitals or to seek help for those trapped under the rubble of bombed houses.

An aid worker in norther Gaza said they witnessed “the most vicious attacks” by Israel during the communication blackout.

“There were aerial bombardments, naval fire, and mortar fire altogether. I have no idea what the type of bombs that were used,” said Mahmoud Shalabi, senior program manager with Medical Aid for Palestinians, who lives in Beit Lahia.

Israeli airstrikes have hit areas around Gaza’s largest hospital, residents say, destroying roads leading to the facility, which is a major shelter for Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment.

The Israeli military has renewed allegations that top Hamas leaders and operatives have built underground bunkers below Shifa hospital and accused the militant group of using civilians as human shields.

Israel has not presented evidence, and Hamas denies the claims.

“Reaching the hospital has become increasingly difficult,” Mahmoud al-Sawah, who was sheltering in the hospital, said over the phone on Sunday. “It seems they want to cut off the area.”

Source