Hours after Israel was accused of making “starvation a bargaining chip” in Gaza, its military launched a wave of deadly strikes across the enclave, killing at least 70 people, Palestinian health officials said
“A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, unable to be reached by ambulances and civil defense crews,” the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement.
The strikes came less than 24 hours after United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher called an Israel-initiated and U.S.-backed humanitarian aid distribution plan for Gaza a “cynical sideshow” and “a deliberate distraction.”
At a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Fletcher said the plan was a “fig leaf for further violence and displacement” of Palestinians in the war-torn enclave, adding that the international community should reflect on what it will tell future generations about what actions were taken “to stop the 21st century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza.”
No humanitarian aid has been delivered to Gaza since March 2, and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises, has warned that half a million people, or around a quarter of the enclave’s population, face starvation.
Wednesday’s strikes came after at least 48 people, including 22 children, were killed strikes on two hospitals in Gaza on Tuesday.
An NBC News crews filmed multiple craters at the European Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis shortly after they were hit. A bus had fallen into one of the craters in front of the hospital.
It was like the “earth split open and swallowed people,” Asma Abu Daqqa told the crew as she frantically searched for her children who were inside the hospital at the time of the strike. “They left us with no safe place. They targeted us in the hospitals,” she added.
Tomo Potokar, a British plastic surgeon, said he was thrown off his bed when the strikes hit.
“There’s damage all around here. There’s damage to the operating theater,” he said. “This hospital has many patients in it that need treatment who were already badly injured."
Calling the strikes “targeted,” the Israeli military said it had destroyed an “underground” Hamas infrastructure beneath the hospital that was the site of a “command and control center.”
Israel has justified previous strikes on Gaza hospitals the same way. Hamas has denied it uses the facilities to shield fighters and weaponry, while the U.N. has said the strikes reflect a “pattern of deadly attacks” that have pushed Gaza’s health care system “to the brink of total collapse.”
Many of the injured from the strikes on the European Hospital were transferred to Nasser Hospital, which was also hit by an Israeli strike that left a gaping hole through the third floor and damaging a burn unit.
“The ward is almost destroyed,” Ahmed Ryad Seiam, a paramedic at the hospital, told the NBC News crew at the scene.
Palestinian health officials say almost 53,000 people have died in Gaza since the outbreak of the war that began with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
The latest strikes came amid President Donald Trump’s four-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He is not expected to visit Israel.
Palestinians were hoping his visit would pressure Israel into a reduction of violence. Hamas on Monday released Edan Alexander, the last known living American hostage it had been holding.
Trump said in Riyadh on Tuesday that more hostages would follow and that the people of Gaza deserved a better future.
