Massive fire erupts at Nasser Hospital in Gaza on Eid al-Fitr eve

GAZA CITY, Palestine

A massive fire erupted in a warehouse at Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on the eve of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr.

The Civil Defense in the enclave said in a statement that its teams had rushed to the scene to extinguish the fire that broke out on Tuesday.

The statement noted that the fire was difficult to extinguish and control due to the teams' limited resources and the destruction of streets.

The Civil Defense did not specify the reasons for the fire.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive against the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, which killed less than 1,200 people.

More than 33,300 Palestinians have since been killed and nearly 76,000 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war, now on day 186, 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 (ICJ), which in January issued an interim ruling that 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