Innocent families wiped out, grieving Palestinians in Gaza ask why

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 16 November 2023

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By SAMYA KULLAB and NAJIB JOBAIN

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — The night a blast struck his family’s home in the Gaza Strip, Ahmed al-Naouq was more than 2,000 miles away but he still jolted awake, consumed with inexplicable panic.

He reached for his cellphone to find that a friend had written — and then deleted — a message. Al-Naouq called him from London. The words that spilled from the other end of the line landed like world-shattering blows: Airstrike. Everyone killed.

Four nights later, Ammar al-Butta was startled from sleep in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis when the wall of his bedroom collapsed over him. A missile had pierced his top-floor apartment and exploded one floor below.

He lurched over the rubble, shining the light of his cellphone into the wreckage, calling out to his 16 relatives.

“Anyone there?” he cried. There was only silence.

Entire generations of Palestinian families in the besieged Gaza Strip — from great-grandparents to infants only weeks old — have been killed in airstrikes in the Israel-Hamas war, in which the Israeli army says it aims to root out the militant group from the densely populated coastal territory.

Attacks are occurring at a scale never seen in years of Israel-Hamas conflict, hitting residential areas, schools, hospitals, mosques and churches, even striking areas in southern Gaza where Israeli forces ordered civilians to flee.

Israel says the goal of the war is to destroy Hamas following the militant group’s deadly Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel that killed at least 1,200 people, and it maintains that the attacks target militant operatives and infrastructure.

It blames the high death toll — more than 11,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry — on Hamas, saying the group endangers civilians by operating among the population and in tunnels underneath civilian areas. Israel says the death toll includes Hamas fighters.

But the scope of the destruction and loss of life in Gaza, with entire families wiped out in a single strike, has raised troubling questions about Israeli military tactics.

GENERATIONS LOST

It would take many hours of horror and mayhem before the truth would settle like the ash from the Oct. 20 explosion that leveled al-Naouq’s family’s home: 21 relatives killed.

They included his 75-year old father, two brothers, three sisters and their 13 children.

“I can’t believe this actually happened,” al-Naouq, a graduate student in London, told The Associated Press. “Because if I calculate what it means, I will be destroyed.”

His father, Nasri, had recently told him that his sister Aya’s home was destroyed in northern Gaza and she was staying with them in the central city of Deir al-Balah, south of the area Israel had ordered Palestinians to leave.

A home can be rebuilt, al-Naouq recalled replying, all that matters is that she and the children are alive.

But just hours later, they were all dead: Wala’a, the most accomplished of the al-Naouq children with a degree in engineering, and her four children; Alaa and her five children; Aya, known for her wry sense of humor, and her three children; older brother Muhammed; and younger brother Mahmoud, who was preparing to travel to Australia for graduate studies when the war broke out.

Nine of the 21 are still under the rubble; dire fuel shortages prevented civil defense crews from digging them out.

Identifying the dead was another traumatizing endeavor; many bodies were unrecognizable, most were in pieces.

Al-Naouq’s sister, Doaa, who was not in the house at the time of the strike, told him she couldn’t bear the smell of the rotting flesh of their loved ones under the rubble. Someone showed her body parts retrieved from the site and told her it was one of their sisters.

There were two survivors: Shimaa, al-Naouq’s sister-in-law, and Omar, his 3-year-old nephew. His 11-year old niece, Malaka, was taken to al-Aqsa hospital with severe burns but died after doctors gave her ICU bed to another patient with a better chance of survival, his sister Doaa said.

Doctors have to make extraordinarily difficult triage decisions, and severely wounded patients are being left to die because of shortages of beds, medical supplies and fuel, said Dr. Mohammed Qandeel, in Nasser Hospital, Gaza’s second-largest.

“We leave most as we don’t have ventilators or beds,” he said of patients in need of intensive care with complicated blast wounds. “We’ve reached full collapse.”

COMPETING CLAIMS

Israel doesn’t say how it chooses targets in densely populated Gaza. But Israeli officials say many strikes on homes are based on intelligence assessments that wanted Hamas operatives are inside. Though it gives few details, Israel says every airstrike is reviewed by legal experts to ensure they comply with international law.

Many Gaza families deny any Hamas targets were operating from their homes.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but says a majority of Palestinians killed have been minors and women, about 4,500 and 2,200 respectively. At least 304 families have lost at least 10 relatives; about 31 families have lost over 30, according to a Nov. 6 health ministry report. That number is likely higher now as intense Israeli bombardment has continued.

Among the families with the highest number of casualties, many have been children.

The al-Astal family lost 89 relatives, 18 of them children under the age of 10, including three babies not yet a year old, according to an Oct. 26 ministry report. The Hassouna family had 74 killed, including 22 children ranging in age from 1 to 10 years old, it said. The Najjars lost 65 relatives: Nine were under 10 years old and 13 were under 4.

Ammar al-Butta says his relatives were all civilians with no links to Hamas.

The Saqallah family, his cousins known for their sweet shops in Gaza City, had taken shelter with al-Butta’s family in their four-story house in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, heeding Israeli evacuation orders.

The family arrived with trays of confections for their hosts. Joking with his cousins in the family’s living room was a rare moment of respite in the fog of war and displacement, the 29-year-old teacher said.

One cousin, Ahmed Saqallah, 42, spoke of rebuilding his family’s bomb-damaged home and looked forward to fixing the plumbing and painting.

“Simple, sweet dreams,” al-Butta said.

Ten days later all 16 Saqallahs, from 69-year old Nadia to baby Asaad, not yet a year old, were killed in the Oct. 24 pre-dawn attack.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

A question left by al-Naouq in his family’s WhatsApp group the night the blast leveled their home — “Tell me, how are you guys?” — remains unanswered.

The distance has made the devastating news all the more surreal. Observing London’s peaceful nights, where sounds of mirth resonate from restaurants and bars, al-Naouq imagines the airstrikes lighting Gaza’s skies, the screams of panicked residents. His family, lying lifeless under the rubble.

He has no idea where his relatives’ bodies are buried. There was no space in the hospital morgue to keep them. They could be in a mass grave, but al-Naouq has no way of knowing.

Al-Butta said the Saqallah family was buried in his family grave in Khan Younis. The entire neighborhood mourned when they were interred. “Our eyes are dry,” he said. “There are no tears left.”

In the chaos of the war, taking account of the dead is a rushed, heart-rending process.

It begins with relatives scribbling the names of the dead and missing. They dig into the rubble with their hands, calling out for survivors. Hospitals later issue death certificates.

Grieving relatives, who maintain no one in their households had links to Hamas, ask: Why them?

“Why would they kill children and an old man?” asked al-Naouq. “What is the military justification for bombing my house? They were all civilians.”

“I wish, one day, I can meet the one who pulled the trigger. I want to ask him: Why did you do it?”

Gaza: Hundreds buried in 'mass grave' in Shifa hospital

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 15 November 2023

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Khan Younis in southern Gaza - The director of Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital said on Tuesday that 179 people, including babies and patients who died in the intensive care unit, had been buried in a "mass grave" at the hospital complex.

Israeli Army tanks were massed near the gates of Gaza's main hospital where civilians were trapped in dire conditions on Tuesday. US President Joe Biden called on Israel to protect the complex.

"We were forced to bury them in a mass grave," said Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiyah, adding that seven babies and 29 intensive care patients were among those buried after the hospital's fuel supplies ran out.

Reports say that premature babies dying due to the lack of electricity and patients facing gunfire, a surgeon working for Doctors Without Borders said.

Israel has agreed to daily pauses in military operations around specified humanitarian "corridors" to allow Gazans to flee fighting, but insisted there will be no broader ceasefire before hostages are released. Qatar is mediating talks on a possible deal to free the hostages.

Gaza death toll rises to 11,320

The Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday that the death toll from Israel's attack on the Palestinian territory had reached 11,320.

The dead included 4,650 children and 3,145 women, according to the ministry, which has struggled to keep an exact toll of the dead due to the scale of Israel's air and ground assault on northern Gaza.

MSF medics enter Gaza amid collapse in health system

Doctors Without Borders have said that a team of 15 international and national staff have made it into southern Gaza through Egypt's Rafah crossing to help with providing healthcare, amid the collapse of Gaza’s medical infrastructure.

Many of our Palestinian colleagues continue to work tirelessly in support of the local health authorities across #Gaza, where people with horrific wounds and severe burns are flooding the hospitals as a result of the continuous bombing.

An MSF team of 15 international and national staff entered #Gaza from Egypt via the Rafah crossing point. They will aim to support medical and surgical capacity in the Strip, where the healthcare infrastructure has collapsed, and medics are utterly exhausted.

UN chief 'deeply disturbed' by situation in Gaza hospitals

The head of the UN said Tuesday he was "deeply disturbed by the horrible situation" in Gaza hospitals, as the facilities struggle without power and with mounting numbers of decomposing bodies during the Israeli bombardment of the territory.

"The Secretary-General is deeply disturbed by the horrible situation and dramatic loss of life in several hospitals in Gaza," Antonio Guterres's spokesman said in a statement.

"In the name of humanity, the Secretary-General calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire."

UN chief calls for immediate Gaza truce 'in name of humanity

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is deeply disturbed by the "dramatic loss of life" in several hospitals in the Gaza Strip, his spokesman said on Tuesday.

"In the name of humanity, the secretary-general calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

People trapped in Al Shifa Hospital plan to bury bodies

People trapped inside Gaza's Al Shifa Hospital plan to start burying bodies within the hospital compound on Tuesday without Israeli approval because the situation has become untenable, two sources at the hospital said.

Dr. Ahmed Al Mokhallalati, a surgeon, and Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said in separate telephone interviews from within the compound that more than 100 bodies had accumulated there, creating an acute sanitary crisis.

"We are planning to bury them today in a mass grave inside the Al Shifa medical complex. It is going to be very dangerous as we don't have any cover or protection from the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), but we have no other options, the corpses of the martyrs began to decompose," said Qidra. "The men are digging right now as we speak."

Israeli forces arrest 28 and kill 6 in the West Bank

Israeli forces conducted a series of detentions, arresting 28 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem on Tuesday morning, as reported by the Wafa news agency.

These arrests coincided with an Israeli operation killing six Palestinians in Tulkarm. Three fell victim to a drone strike, while others were shot in Tulkarm refugee camp.

The raid left twelve others injured, including four in critical condition, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Attacks on Gaza hospitals possibly 'war crimes': HRW

Human Rights Watch condemned Israeli military’s "unlawful attacks" on hospitals and medical teams in Gaza on Tuesday.

The HRW report accused the Israeli attacks of "destroying Gaza’s healthcare system" and said "they should be investigated as war crimes."

Besieged Gaza hospital misery continues while rainfall prompts new health scare

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Written by northsouth

Category: MENA

Published: 14 November 2023

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GAZA - UN health agency WHO hailed on Tuesday the “heroic efforts” of staff at Gaza City’s besieged Al-Shifa hospital and expressed concern for hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the enclave where heavy rainfall has caused flooding and aggravated the already dire health crisis.

“Rain will just add further to the suffering” of people in the Strip, WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris told reporters in Geneva, at a time when disruptions in sewage pumping and water shortages have caused a spike in waterborne diseases and bacterial infections.

The World Health Organization warned last week that since mid-October, over 33,500 cases of diarrhoea have been reported, mostly among children under five, some 16 times the monthly average.

Facilities run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, where over 580,000 displaced people in southern Gaza had sought shelter due to Israel’s offensive in retaliation for Hamas’ deadly 7 October attacks, are more than nine times over capacity and the overcrowding is posing further health risks.

“We are begging for a ceasefire to happen now,” Dr. Harris insisted.

Hostages’ families in Geneva

Meanwhile in Geneva, the families of some of the 238 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since 7 October were due to continue their advocacy for the release of their loved ones on Tuesday.

A meeting was announced between hostages’ families and Mirjana Spoljaric, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a UN humanitarian partner organisation.

In a statement, the ICRC said that Ms. Spoljaric would also meet with the Israeli authorities and that the organisation has been “persistently advocating on behalf of the hostages held in Gaza, including directly with Hamas and with actors who may have influence on the parties”.

Health workers ‘doing whatever they can’

WHO’s Dr. Harris described in detail the dire situation at Al-Shifa hospital, which is a focus of operations by the Israeli Defense Forces which claim that Hamas had established a command centre under the hospital – an allegation denied by medical staff.

Speaking of the “heroic” health workers, Dr. Harris said that they are “doing whatever they can to keep going” while the facility has been without power since 11 November and there was not enough food and clean water. Some 700 patients were still present at the site and more than 400 health staff, in addition to around 3,000 displaced persons who had sought refuge there. Dr. Harris said that 28 patient deaths have been reported in the last 48 hours.

Meanwhile, news reports on Tuesday morning indicated that the Israeli military offered to provide incubators to Al-Shifa hospital, where 36 premature babies require constant care. As many as six premature babies had reportedly died over the past three days as their incubators were unable to function owing to the lack of electricity.

Evacuation ‘very difficult’

Asked about the possibility of evacuating patients, Dr. Harris explained that all of those remaining at Al-Shifa required critical support to stay alive. Moving them “would be a very difficult thing to ask in the best circumstances”, Dr. Harris said, let alone amid bombing, armed clashes and a lack of fuel for ambulances.

“The best way would be to stop the hostilities right now and focus on saving lives, not taking lives,” she insisted.

Record number of attacks on healthcare

Some 135 attacks on health facilities have been documented in Gaza over the course of the past month, and WHO’s Dr. Harris said that this was the highest number recorded in such a short amount of time.

“I hope this is the worst we ever see,” she said.

The WHO spokesperson pointed to an “increasing trend” of attacks on health care, also seen in other ongoing conflicts in Sudan and in Ukraine. “It seems that somehow the understanding that a hospital must a safe haven, a place where people come to be treated when they are in need, has been forgotten,” she told journalists.