The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) condemned the actions of Israeli troops who targeted an ambulance convoy in Gaza on Friday (3/11). The attack is said to have killed 15 people and injured more than 60 others.
PRCS said in a statement early Saturday that one of its ambulances was hit by “a missile fired by Israeli forces”, about two meters from the entrance to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
The attacks resulted in the deaths of 15 civilians and injured 60 others, the PRCS said, similar to a statement by the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
Another ambulance, belonging to the Ministry of Health, was also “directly targeted” by a missile about a kilometer from the hospital, causing injuries and damage, he said.
People gather around an ambulance damaged by a reported Israeli attack in front of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on November 3, 2023. (Photo: AFP)
PRCS, part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, added that deliberately targeting medical teams was a “grave violation of the Geneva Conventions, a war crime.”
The Israeli military said it carried out an air strike on “an ambulance identified as being used by Hamas terrorist cells near their positions in the battle zone.”
“A number of Hamas terrorist members were killed in the attack,” said a military statement.
An AFP journalist at the scene of the attack saw bodies strewn next to a damaged ambulance outside the hospital. The building appeared crowded with injured victims and civilians seeking shelter from Israeli bombings.
After the attack, they saw a child being taken away and a dead horse tied to a cart next to a blood-stained Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance.
The Hamas government said Israeli forces attacked an “ambulance convoy carrying wounded” from Gaza City towards Rafah in the south of the territory.
World Health Organization (WHO) Secretary General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “deeply shocked by reports of an attack on ambulances evacuating patients near Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, causing deaths, injuries and damage.”
“We reiterate: patients, health workers, facilities and ambulances must be protected at all times. Always,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
A Palestinian inspects the destruction of his house after the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis, November 3, 2023. (Photo: AP)
Lynn Hastings, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, expressed “concern” over the attack “as patients are being evacuated to seek safety.”
Al-Shifa Hospital has a bed occupancy rate of 164 percent according to WHO. The organization warned Wednesday that the hospital was short of fuel for generators and that conditions were “immediately endangering the lives” of patients.
Some 16 hospitals in Gaza are no longer functioning due to damage from Israeli attacks and fuel shortages, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
More than 23,500 people were injured across Gaza in four weeks of war, the Health Ministry said, while the death toll surpassed 9,200. (ah/ft)