GAZA/BEIRUT: Zionist military strikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 120 Palestinians over the last 48 hours and hit a hospital on the northern edge of the enclave, wounding medical staff and damaging equipment, Palestinian medics said on Saturday. Among the dead were seven members of one family whose house was hit overnight in the Zeitoun suburb of Gaza City, the health officials said. The rest were killed in separate Zionist strikes in central and southern Gaza.
At Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza that is barely operational, director Hussam Abu Safiya said the ongoing Zionist bombardment appeared aimed at forcing hospital staff to evacuate – something they have refused to do since the incursion began. "Yesterday (Friday), from the afternoon until midnight, the bombardment directly targeted the entrance to the emergency and reception area several times,” he said in a statement, adding that 12 staff members including doctors and nurses were injured.
The strike also caused significant damage that disrupted the electrical generator, oxygen supply network and water supply, he added. The 13-month Zionist campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people and displaced nearly all the enclave’s population at least once, according to Gaza officials. The war has also created a humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory, where people are experiencing acute shortages of food, fuel and medicines. The United Nations and others have repeatedly decried humanitarian conditions, particularly in northern Gaza.
Umm Muhammad Abu Sabla, the sister of one of the victims of Saturday’s strikes, told AFP she rushed to the scene to find "people carrying body parts from under the rubble”. "Our entire life is misery. Let them kill us all so we can be relieved from this suffering,” the 62-year-old said in the main southern city of Khan Yunis.
A spokesperson for the armed wing of Hamas, Abu Ubaida, said later on Saturday that a female Zionist captive in the group’s custody had been killed in northern Gaza in an area under attack by Zionist forces.
"The life of another female prisoner who used to be with her remains in imminent danger,” he added, accusing the government of Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being responsible and of undermining efforts to end the war.
Meanwhile, a powerful airstrike killed 15 people in central Beirut on Saturday and 13 others were killed in attacks northeast of the Lebanese capital, the health ministry said, as the Zionist entity pressed its offensive against Hezbollah. Eight of the victims, four of them children, were killed in a strike on the village of Chimstar and five people died in an attack on the village of Bodai, the ministry said. Both villages are in the Baalbek district.
In Beirut, an eight-storey building was struck with four missiles, including bunker-penetrating types designed to hit underground targets, said a Lebanese security source. At the site of the Zionist strike in central Beirut, Amin Chirri, a member of parliament representing Hezbollah, said there had been no Hezbollah leader in the building that was struck.
Saturday’s blasts shook the capital at around 4 am and left a deep crater. Beirut smelled strongly of explosives for hours afterwards. Rescuers searched through rubble, in an area of the city known for its antique shops. The Zionist air force also struck Hezbollah targets in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the group’s stronghold.
A man whose family was hurt in the strike in central Beirut tried to comfort a traumatized woman outside a hospital. Car windows were shattered. "There was dust and wrecked houses, people running and screaming, they were running, my wife is in hospital, my daughter is in hospital, my aunt is in the hospital,” said the man, Nemir Zakariya, who held up a picture of his daughter. "This is the little one, and my son also got hurt - this is my daughter, she is in the American University (of Beirut Medical Centre), this is what happened.”
"The strike was so strong it felt like the building was about to fall on our heads,” said Samir, 60, who lives in a building facing the one that was destroyed. He said he fled his home in the middle of the night with his wife and children. "We saw two dead people on the ground... The children started crying and their mother cried even more,” he told AFP. Separately, at least five people were killed and two wounded in a Zionist strike on Roum village in southern Lebanon on Saturday, according to the Lebanese state news agency.
In a telephone call with Zionist Defense Minister Israel Katz on Saturday, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin "reiterated US commitment to a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon that allows (Zionist) and Lebanese civilians to return safely to their homes on both sides of the border”, a spokesperson said. In his call with Katz, the Pentagon chief also "urged the government of (the Zionist entity) to continue to take steps to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza”. – Agencies