Israeli army kills more than 200 Palestinians at Gaza hospital, military says

JERUSALEM

Israeli forces killed more than 200 Palestinians during its ongoing raid on Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the military said on Thursday.

A military statement said that army forces were still fighting at the hospital.

“Around 200 saboteurs have been eliminated,” it added.

The army claimed that its forces evacuated civilians, patients, and medical staff to another part of the hospital “which the army prepared and established to allow proper medical treatment to continue.”

The Israeli army raided the hospital, the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip that houses thousands of patients and displaced people, on March 18.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Palestinian enclave since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed.

Nearly 32,500 Palestinians have since been killed and over 74,900 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war, now in its 174th day, has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala