Hundreds likely dead in Gaza hospital blast, as Israeli blockade cripples medical response
By Jessie Yeung, Tara John and Zahid Mahmood, CNN
(CNN) — Palestinian officials say hundreds were killed by a massive blast at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday, as humanitarian concerns mount over Israel’s deprivation of food, fuel and electricity to the enclave’s population.
Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital was sheltering thousands of displaced people when it was bombed Tuesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement. Many victims are still under the rubble, it added.
Palestinian officials blamed ongoing Israeli airstrikes for the lethal incident. But the Israel Defense Forces has “categorically” denied any involvement in the hospital attack, blaming instead a “failed rocket launch” by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, a rival Islamist militant group in Gaza.
“We did not strike that, and that the intelligence that we have suggests that it was a failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad, and I want to add, categorically, that we do not intentionally strike any sensitive facilities, any sensitive facilities, and definitely not hospitals,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN.
Gaza has been under siege by Israel for more than a week, in response to the deadly incursion by Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls the coastal enclave, home to 2.2 million people. Hospitals meanwhile are struggling to tend to the wounded across the territory, operating with shortages of electricity and water.
Vital humanitarian aid is meanwhile piling up at Gaza’s shuttered border, despite diplomatic efforts to open a corridor from Egypt. The United Nations and other officials have said they need assurance of safe passage for any potential aid convoys.
Amid growing international pressure to address the crisis, US President Joe Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday, an extraordinary wartime visit that follows intense efforts by Secretary of State Antony Blinken across the Middle East.
Biden was also due to attend a summit scheduled in Amman, the capital of Jordan, with several Arab leaders. However, the summit was canceled in the wake of the hospital blast.
Instead of the planned meeting, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he would travel back to Ramallah for an urgent meeting of the Palestinian leadership.
The Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the center of Gaza City was sheltering thousands of people who had been forcibly evacuated, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Hamas, which controls the enclave, said more than 500 people were killed by the bombing. The Palestinian Health Ministry earlier said preliminary estimates indicate that between 200 to 300 people died in the attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blamed the “barbaric terrorists in Gaza” for “attacking” the hospital on Tuesday.
“Whoever brutally murdered our children is also murdering their children,” he added.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari later told CNN the IDF has communications between militants in Gaza “saying this is an Islamic Jihad event” as well as drone footage showing strike impact on the hospital’s parking lot, but not the hospital itself.
Hagari said the IDF will soon release that footage and audio of the intercepted communications.
As Israeli and Gazan officials blame the other for the hospital tragedy, protests have sprung up in a number of Middle Eastern cities including Amman, where protesters attempted to reach the Israeli embassy.
Hospitals under siege
More than a week of Israeli bombardment has killed at least 3,000 people, including 1,032 girls and 940 boys, and wounded 12,500 in Gaza, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Tuesday. Casualties in Gaza over the past 10 days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014.
While the IDF has said it does not target hospitals, the UN and Doctors Without Borders say Israeli airstrikes have struck medical facilities, including hospitals and ambulances.
On Tuesday, Israeli warplanes hit two densely populated refugee camps and an UNRWA school housing displaced people in central Gaza killed at least 18 people and injured scores, Palestinian officials said.
The IDF said that high-level Hamas commander Ayman Nofal was killed in the airstrikes in Gaza on Tuesday.
In the occupied West Bank at least 61 people have been killed, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Tuesday. At least 20 humanitarian workers from the UN, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent have been killed in Gaza, the UN said.
Meanwhile, health services within Gaza are on the brink and food and water supplies are running low. Twenty out of 23 hospitals were offering partial services because fuel reserves are “almost totally depleted,” the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) warned on Tuesday.
UN agencies have warned that shops are less than a week away from running out of available food stocks and that that Gaza’s last seawater desalination plant had shut down, bringing the risk of further deaths, dehydration and waterborne diseases.
Hospitals have been receiving dozens of bodies from different areas of south Gaza, the director of Gaza hospitals, Dr. Mohammad Zaqout, told CNN. The toll includes dozens of victims from air strikes in Rafah.
The Palestinian Interior Ministry said Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 49 people in strikes on the southern Gaza cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.
IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN he was “not aware of any strikes specifically in those areas but they could have happened.”
Closed crossing
Urgent calls for help are growing on both sides of the crossing as aid amasses on the Egyptian side of the border.
Blinken on Tuesday said the the United States and Israel “have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza.”
But on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, a miles long convoy of humanitarian assistance awaiting entry into Gaza, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN.
“Until now, there is no safe passage that has been granted” as they do not “have any authorization or clear, secure routes for those convoys to be able to enter safely and without any possibility of their being targeted,” he said.
He added that the crossing was bombed four times in the past few days.
Beyond the border crossing, moving aid to those in need is extremely complex in Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly hit UN facilities in the past week.
“We need to have areas where humanitarians can move through safely, where people who are receiving humanitarian aid can receive that aid safely,” UN spokesman Dujarric told CNN in a press briefing Tuesday.
“The last thing you would want to see is creating distribution points where people receive that aid are not safe.”
WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris told CNN the UN health agency had struck an agreement with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to open the Rafah crossing for aid – but Israel’s strikes rendered the facility unsafe, thereby halting the movement of crucial supplies.
On Tuesday, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said the only things that should be entering Gaza “are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid” until Hamas releases hostages, he wrote on Telegram.
On the Gaza side, large numbers of evacuees have gathered by the crossing, part of the mass displacement that has seen at least 1 million people flee their homes in the past week alone, according to UNRWA.
One family of five Palestinian-Americans, all US citizens, drove to Rafah on Monday after hearing the borders would be opened but to no avail, said Haifa Kaoud, whose husband Hesham is among the five stuck in Gaza.
Satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies show four 30-foot (9-meter) craters blocking the roadway at the border crossing closest to the Egyptian gate, along with concrete slabs.
Diplomatic efforts have so far failed to ease the conflict. On Monday, the UN Security Council rejected a Russian resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire after it failed to get enough votes.
Several countries including the US, the United Kingdom and France voted against it because the draft did not condemn Hamas for the October 7 attack, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said killed at least 1,400 people with scores taken hostage.
This includes French-Israeli woman, Mia Schem, who was shown in the first hostage video released by Hamas. Her mother, Keren Scharf Schem implored world leaders “to bring my baby back home” when speaking to reporters Tuesday.
CNN cannot independently verify where and when the video of Schem, 21, was taken and what condition she is currently in.
Fears of regional conflict
Regional leaders raised concerns of fighting between Israel and Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah in the north, and Syria, as strikes at the border become a flashpoint for wider conflict.
The IDF said on Tuesday shots were fired towards several locations on the security fence between Israel and Lebanon.
At the same time, Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, warned if the “atrocities” against Gaza persist, “Muslims and resistance forces could lose patience,” and no-one would be able to prevent their actions.
After Hamas’ incursion on October 7, militants fired shots from Lebanon that were intercepted by Israel, leading to a deadly exchange of fire.
On Friday evening local time an Israeli strike killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah who was also from south Lebanon. The assault wounded at least six other reporters.
A CNN video analysis found that the journalists were wearing vest jackets clearly marked as press.
And on Tuesday, Israeli strikes killed at least four people in Alma al-Shaab, in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Red Cross said.
Two Hezbollah fighters were killed in confrontations on Tuesday, the militant group said. It is unclear whether they are part of the death toll reported by the Red Cross.
CORRECTION: This article on the Gaza hospital blast initially did not clearly attribute claims about Israel’s responsibility to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza. Israel later said a “misfired” rocket by militant group Islamic Jihad caused the blast and produced evidence to support its claim. US President Joe Biden said the Israeli position is backed by US intelligence. CNN’s forensic analysis of images and videos suggests a rocket fired from within Gaza caused the blast, not an Israeli airstrike.
An earlier version of this story also misidentified the embassy protesters attempted to reach in Amman. It was the Israeli embassy.
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CNN’s Caitlin Hu, Paul Murphy, Sarah Sirgany, Lucas Lilieholm, Jennifer Hansler, MJ Lee, Kayla Tausche, Eyad Kourdi, Abeer Salman, Samantha Delouya, Nadeen Ebrahim, Tamara Qiblawi, Kareem Khadder, Richard Allen Greene, Mike Schwartz, Sebastian Shukla, Chris Liakos, AnneClaire Stapleton, Caitlin Danaher, Sharon Braithwaite, Lianne Kolirin, Tamar Michaelis and Celina Tebor contributed reporting.
