Occupation continues siege of Shifa hospital in north Gaza, targets 2 southern hospitals

Occupation airstrikes continued on Monday morning to target Shifa Medical Complex — Gaza’s largest hospital — and surrounding residential areas, where resistance forces also clashed with Israeli forces.

Following eight days under siege, the medical complex in the Rimal neighborhood, west of Gaza City, is struggling without access to essential medical services, food, water and fuel as a result of the Israeli aggression. The complex houses approximately 7,000 displaced people, along with patients and medical personnel.

Amid the sound of clashes in the background, a video shared from the area on Monday morning showed parachutes dropping aid in the vicinity of the complex on day eight of its siege by the Israeli forces.

An unknown number of citizens were killed and injured by Israeli artillery and an airstrike in the hospital’s vicinity on Monday morning, medical sources told Palestinian News and Information Agency Wafa.

Local sources added that Israeli forces ordered the immediate evacuation of those inside the medical complex and warned citizens residing in the vicinity of Shifa to evacuate their homes and head to the south of the Gaza Strip.

“We bombed enemy concentrations in the vicinity of the Shifa complex, west of Gaza City, with 60-caliber regular mortar shells,” said the Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad’s military wing, on Monday, according to Al Jazeera.

In its second siege of Shifa since October 7, Israeli forces continue to claim that the hospital is connected to a tunnel network and is used as a base for Hamas, alleging last week that they had killed hundreds of fighters and detained 500, including 358 Hamas members. Israeli Channel 12 said on Monday that operations in the medical complex would last two more days.

While several entities have raised concerns over the humanitarian situation in the hospital, the Israeli military declared its intention to continue the siege on the complex “as long as it deems necessary.”

The Israeli military also carried out military operations in Khan Younis’ Amal neighborhood for the second time since January, attacking and besieging the Amal and Nasr hospitals on Sunday.

After announcing that crew members are trapped and in extreme danger due to Israel’s military siege on Amal hospital, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) stated on Monday that the hospital’s medical personnel and injured patients were ordered to evacuate on Sunday evening, according to a statement reviewed by Mada Masr.

The evacuation was hampered, however, by the Israeli forces’ bulldozing of the surrounding area and collapsed infrastructure, the PRCS said, adding that two healthcare workers were shot while attempting to clear a path by removing rubble.

One of the injured was recovered by the PRCS, while the fate of the other is yet to be discovered. 

Occupation forces continued to besiege the hospital and closed all of its entrances, PRCS told Palestinian News Agency Wafa on Monday morning, trapping civilians inside amid intense bombing and heavy gunfire.

The evacuated medical personnel were forced to return to the hospital on Monday morning. However, upon arrival, they found the hospital’s gate closed, making it impossible for them to re-enter, PRCS said on Monday.

Airstrikes also targeted the southern and eastern areas of Nasser Medical Complex, the second-biggest hospital in the Gaza Strip, located in Khan Younis on Monday morning, according to Al Jazeera.

Nasser hospital was besieged in February for ten consecutive days, leading at the time to the evacuation of thousands of people who were at the facility to the southern areas of the Gaza Strip, namely Rafah, and the arrest of dozens others.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that the Occupation is planning to massacre the thousands seeking shelter and treatment in the Nasser and Shifa medical complexes and the Amal hospital, stressing that the Israeli military is targeting medical staff, displaced people and patients.