Fighting rages in battleground Gaza city as martyrs' toll reaches 26,257
GAZA, Palestine (AFP) - Intense fighting raged Saturday in the Gaza city of Khan Yunis, the main theatre of conflict where the unscrupulous Israeli army is targeting the innocent Palestinians.
The health ministry in Gaza said Saturday at least 26,257 people have been martyred in the Palestinian territory since the war with Israel broke out on October 7. A ministry statement said at least 174 people were killed over the past 24 hours, while another 64,797 have been wounded since the war began.
The unabated hostilities came a day after the UN's International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that Israel must prevent possible acts of genocide in the conflict but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire.
Tensions rose between Israel and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees after Israel charged that several UNRWA staff were involved in the Hamas attacks of October 7, leading some key donor countries to suspend funding.
Alarm has grown over the plight of civilians in Khan Yunis, the southern hometown of Hamas's Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar. Witnesses reported more fierce fighting in the city, where the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory said "135 martyrs arrived at hospitals due to massacres throughout the night".
The Hamas government's press office reported "massive tank bombardment since the morning" targeting a refugee camp and the Nasser hospital. Gaza civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said tens of thousands, including children, endured a night of incessant and cold rain. The harsh weather threatened to cause the "spread of contagious diseases" and made the "humanitarian crisis worse for the two million displaced across the strip", he said.
Suhaila Asfur, a displaced woman, told AFP her family was unable to sleep because of the heavy rain and said: "I don't know what we will do tonight and where we will sleep".
'No healthcare system'
With a humanitarian crisis growing, the UN says most of the estimated 1.7 million Palestinians displaced by the war are crowded into Rafah on the southern border with Egypt.
At Khan Yunis's Nasser Hospital, the largest in the besieged city, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said surgical capacity was "virtually non-existent". The charity said medical services at the hospital had "collapsed" and the few staff who remained "must contend with very low supplies that are insufficient to handle mass casualty events". World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 350 patients and 5,000 displaced people remained at the hospital as fighting continued nearby.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israeli tanks targeted the Al-Amal hospital, another of the few remaining medical facilities in Khan Yunis, and that it was "under siege with heavy gunfire". "There is no longer a healthcare system in Gaza," MSF said.
There were 300 to 500 patients trapped at the Nasser hospital with "war-related injuries such as open wounds, lacerations from explosions, fractures and burns".
