Fury erupts after Gaza hospital strike kills more than 500

Occupied Palestinian Territories — AFP/AA

Health officials in Gaza have said that more than 500 people were killed in an air strike on a hospital compound which sheltered the wounded and displaced from Israeli bombing, prompting condemnation and fury in the Middle East and beyond.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, Israel was behind the attack on the Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza.

However, Israel’s military has blamed a “malfunctioning rocket fired by Islamic Jihad militants” – a claim completely rejected by Islamic Jihad.

The strike, soon after the UN said at least six were killed in a strike on a nearby UN-run school during Israeli bombardments, escalates the 11-day-old war, which has already claimed thousands of lives in the impoverished, besieged Gaza Strip.

It also happened just hours before US President Joe Biden was due to touch down in the Middle East for high-stakes talks on the war, which was cancelled as summit host Jordan and the wider region mourned the victims, the White House said.

Biden’s visit to Israel was still going ahead.

In chaotic scenes, those injured were taken from the Ahli Arab hospital in ambulances to other medical centres nearby, while medics and civilians covered rows of the dead in white plastic sheets or blankets.

Qatar called it “a brutal massacre” and a “heinous crime against defenceless civilians”, with the African Union, World Health Organization and Arab League among those condemning the strike.

In Jordan, protesters tried to storm the Israeli embassy while Hamas’s ally, the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, called for a “day of rage” on Wednesday.

“We were operating in the hospital. There was a strong explosion and the ceiling fell on the operating room.” said Ghassan Abu Sittah, a doctor with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

He added: “Hospitals are not a target. This bloodshed must stop. Enough is enough.”

Israel’s military said that “a barrage of rockets was fired by terrorists in Gaza, passing in close proximity to Ahli hospital in Gaza at the time it was hit”.

“Intelligence from multiple sources we have… indicates that Islamic Jihad is responsible for the failed rocket launch which hit the hospital in Gaza,” it added.

Gaza-based Islamic Jihad has rejected the untenable claim.