Anadolu staff
19 March 2024•Update: 20 March 2024
GAZA CITY, Palestine
Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Tuesday denounced an Israeli raid on the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as a “war crime.”
The Israeli army raided the facility on Monday, which houses thousands of ill and wounded patients, as well as displaced people.
The military said that Israeli forces had killed 50 Palestinians and detained 180 others during the hospital raid.
"This savage bombardment on the hospital and surrounding homes…amount to a war crime and genocide,'' Hamas leader Izzat al-Rishq said in a statement.
He said the hospital attack “reflects a state of confusion” in the Israeli government and army.
Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since a cross-border incursion by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed nearly 1,200 people.
More than 31,800 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in the enclave, and nearly 74,000 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of most food, clean water and medicine, while 60%of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the ICJ. 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 Mohammad Sio in Istanbul
