At least 95 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip, mainly in the north of the enclave where a hospital was attacked, medical supplies were torched and operations were disrupted, health officials said.
A vast majority of the victims in Thursday’s attacks were civilians in northern Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera.
The Israeli military’s shelling of central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, the Nuseirat refugee camp and the az-Zawayda areas also left dozens wounded from attacks on Thursday night that continued into Friday, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Most of those killed were women and children, Wafa reported, as medical sources confirmed that 47 bodies were taken to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah.
Most of the victims were killed in the bombing of several houses in the Nuseirat area.
The same houses were hit a second time as people rushed to rescue those who survived the first strike, leading to more casualties, Wafa said. The search for people missing under the rubble was continuing.
Meanwhile, a new United Nations report said Israel has “perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system” that has included “deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities”, both of which are war crimes.
The World Health Organization (WHO) condemned an attack on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, which caused injuries and damaged recently delivered lifesaving supplies.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the attack “caused injuries to some hospital staff members, and hit a storage space containing lifesaving WHO supplies brought in via complex missions, as well as the desalination station and water tanks on top of the hospital”.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the hospital’s third floor was hit, resulting in the loss of supplies “delivered just five days ago”.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 43,204 Palestinians and wounded 101,641 since October 7, 2023, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.