Jerusalem, Mar 30 (EFE).- Israeli troops intensified attacks and bombings on Gaza City, as well as in the center and south of the Palestinian Strip, during the past hours. They also announced the killing of three key Hamas figures in Al-Shifa hospital.
An operation coordinated by the Shayetet 13 flotilla, the Duvdevan unit, and the Nahal brigade “carried out a selective raid in a hospital building (Al-Shifa) where they encountered the terrorists,” detailed a military statement on Saturday.
The Shayetet 13 is a unit of the Israeli Navy and is one of the primal reconnaissance units of the Israel Defense Forces.
According to the document, soldiers killed Mahmoud Halil Zakzouk, the deputy commander of Hamas rocket operations, in the emergency room.
Other deaths were confirmed, including Fadi Duyk, who coordinated an attack in the West Bank in 2002, as well as Zakaria Najib, convicted for participating in the kidnapping and murder of the Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman in 1994.
These names add to the announced death of Hamas’s head of human resources and supply, Raed Thabet, also at the Al Shifa Hospital on March 28.
According to Israeli military figures, over 200 alleged militants have succumbed in this military operation that began on March 18.
Likewise, nearly 1,000 people have been arrested, with around 500 of them associated with “Hamas or Islamic Jihad,” according to Israel, which is attacking this medical center for the fourth time.
On Saturday, the Palestinian news agency Wafa denounced “executions, detentions, torture, and forced displacement” in the center.
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor NGO on Wednesday documented the “execution” of 13 children (aged between four and 16) by direct Israeli fire in the medical complex.
“There are still 107 patients” inside the hospital, “in inhuman conditions, without water, electricity, or medicine,” including 30 patients with mobility difficulties and 60 medical staff members, the Gaza Health Ministry detailed in a statement on Saturday.
“The occupation has prevented all attempts to evacuate these patients through international institutions,” the statement denounces, warning that “the lives of these patients are in grave danger.”
A moral contradiction
Despite the destruction, the United States has authorized the transference of billions of dollars for bombs and fighter jets to Israel in recent days, according to military and diplomatic sources.
The move was criticized on Saturday by the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, which said it questioned the alleged US concern over the high number of civilian deaths in the enclave.
Meanwhile, the Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday “strongly condemned” that act and said it “confirms the full collaboration of this administration (Biden’s) in the brutal extermination war undertaken by the Nazi-Zionist occupation,” said in a statement via Telegram.
Negotiations for a ceasefire and the release of hostages are expected to resume in Cairo on Sunday, Egyptian channel Al Qahera News TV reported Saturday, citing a security source.
Unimplemented ceasefire
This week, the UN Security Council approved a resolution for a ceasefire, thanks to the United States’ abstention.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued new interim measures in the incitement to genocide case brought by South Africa, demanding that the Netanyahu government allow immediate, large-scale and unrestricted access to aid.
More than a million Gazans suffer from a lack of food of catastrophic proportions, according to a recent UN-backed food insecurity report.
However, despite these international mandates, nothing has changed. According to UNRWA, an average of 159 trucks of humanitarian aid entered Gaza in March 2024, compared to 500 trucks per day before the war. EFE
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