US says Hamas and militias are hiding in Gaza hospitals

UOne of these hospitals is the largest in that Palestinian territory, the Al-Shifa hospital, in the city of Gaza, according to White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who stressed that the United States does not support attacks on health establishments. health.

“We do not support air attacks on hospitals. Hospitals and patients must be protected,” Kirby told journalists who accompanied US President Joe Biden aboard the Air Force One plane, on a trip to San Francisco for a summit with the leaders of the Asia-Pacific region.

Kirby said the United States also doesn’t want to see “fighting in hospitals, where innocent people, defenseless people, sick people are simply trying to get the medical care they deserve.”

Asked for evidence to support the claim that Gaza’s hospitals are being used as a hideout by Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) fighters and their allies, Kirby responded that it “comes from multiple sources of information”, without providing further details. .

Palestinian authorities today called for a ceasefire to evacuate three dozen newborns and other sick people trapped in Gaza’s largest hospital, as Israeli forces fight Hamas in the surrounding streets and gain more ground in northern Gaza.

For several days now, the Israeli Army has surrounded the Al-Shifa hospital, where and under which it claims Hamas is hiding, using civilians as shields from its main command base.

Hospital officials and Hamas deny this accusation. Meanwhile, hundreds of patients, healthcare professionals and displaced people are trapped inside the facilities, with supplies running low and without electricity to run incubators and other life-saving equipment.

Without refrigeration for days, morgue workers opened a mass grave in the courtyard for more than 120 bodies, authorities said.

The confrontation at Al-Shifa and other hospitals comes at a time when Israeli forces increasingly control parts of Gaza City and the northern part of the Gaza Strip, saying they are expelling and killing Hamas fighters.

On October 7, fighters from the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) — in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007 and classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel — carried out an attack of unprecedented dimensions on Israeli territory. since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, causing 1,200 deaths, mostly civilians, around 5,000 injured and more than 200 hostages.

In retaliation, Israel declared a war to “eradicate” Hamas, which began with cuts to food, water, electricity and fuel supplies in the Gaza Strip and daily bombings, followed by a ground offensive that surrounded Gaza City.

The war between Israel and Hamas, which today entered its 39th day and continues to threaten to spread throughout the Middle East region, has so far left more than 11,000 dead in the Gaza Strip, most of them civilians, 28,200 injured, 3,250 missing under the rubble and more than 1.6 million displaced people, according to the most recent report from local authorities.

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