Doctors in Gaza try to save hospital survivors as tensions rise in the Middle East

The Israeli military also released a recording it said was of two Hamas militants discussing the explosion, in which people said it was believed to be a failed Islamic Jihad launch and that the shrapnel appeared to be from the militia’s weapons. not Israelis.

Hagari said the country would share its information with British and American authorities and questioned the death toll given by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

Since the start of the war, some 450 rockets fired at Israel by militant groups have landed in Gaza, according to the military.

Hamas called Tuesday’s explosion at the hospital a “horrible massacre,” and claimed it was caused by an Israeli attack.

Islamic Jihad rejected the Israeli claims and accused Israel of “trying to evade responsibility for the brutal massacre it committed.”

The group cited Israel’s order to evacuate Al Ahli and reports of a previous attack on the hospital complex as evidence that the hospital was an Israeli target. He also claimed that the magnitude of the explosion, the angle of fall of the bomb and the extent of the destruction pointed to Israel.

Tuesday night’s explosion at Al Ahli hospital left shocking scenes. Hundreds of Palestinians had taken refuge in Al Ahli and other hospitals in Gaza City in the hope that they would be saved from shelling after Israel ordered all residents of the city and its surroundings to evacuate to the south of the territory.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a plastic surgeon working in Al Ahli, said the hospital was full of displaced people seeking shelter from Israeli airstrikes when he heard a loud explosion and the roof of his operating room collapsed.

“The wounded started limping towards us,” he wrote on Facebook. She saw hundreds of dead and seriously injured.

“I put a tourniquet on the thigh of a man whose leg had been blown off and then went to treat a man with a penetrating wound to his neck,” he said.

Videos that The Associated Press confirmed came from the hospital showed the center’s grounds strewn with bodies, many of them young children, as flames engulfed the building. The grass around them was littered with blankets, backpacks, and other belongings. On Wednesday morning, the place was dotted with charred cars and the black remains of the fire covered the ground.

Hospital director Suhaila Tarazi said the scene after the explosion was “unlike anything I have ever seen or even imagined.”

“Our hospital is a place of love and reconciliation,” he said. “We are all losers in this war. And it must end.”

Ambulances and private vehicles took about 350 victims to the city’s main hospital, Al Shifa, which was already overwhelmed by wounded from other attacks, said its director, Mohammed Abu Selmia.

The victims arrived with horrific injuries, according to Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra. Some were decapitated, disemboweled or missing limbs.

Doctors at the overwhelmed hospital resorted to operating on the floor and in hallways, mostly without anesthesia.

“We need equipment, medicines, beds, anesthesia, we need everything,” said Abu Selmia. He warned that fuel for the hospital’s generators would run out within hours, forcing operations to be suspended entirely, if supplies did not arrive in the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, the United States was trying to convince Israel to allow the delivery of supplies to desperate civilians, humanitarian groups and hospitals in the tiny Gaza Strip, which has been under a complete blockade since last week’s bloody Hamas attack. Hundreds of thousands of increasingly desperate people tried to get water and bread.