UN shelter in besieged Gaza City is hit and at least nine people die

Israeli forces pushed deeper into southern Gaza's largest city on Wednesday, surrounding two major hospitals where thousands of people sought safety. An attack on a United Nations shelter killed at least nine people, according to U.N. officials and local health officials.

The Israeli military said it has “currently ruled out” that its air or artillery fire was responsible for the attack on the shelter in Khan Younis, where the UN housed about 800 people. In addition to the nine deaths, 75 other people were injured. according to Thomas Whitewhich oversees UN relief operations in Gaza.

U.N. officials did not blame Israel directly but said the shelter, in a vocational training center, had been hit by two rounds of tanks. Israel is the only fighter in Gaza with tanks.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Palestinian aid agency, said it was a shelter “clearly marked” as a UN facility and that its coordinates had been shared with Israeli authorities. 'Once again a blatant disregard for the basic rules of war' Mr Lazzarini wrote on social media.

At a news conference in Washington, Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, called the strike “incredibly worrying” and added: “Citizens must be protected, and the protected nature of UN facilities must be respected.” He declined to say whether U.S. officials had spoken to Israelis about the bomb shelter strike.

The Israeli military said it was investigating its operations in the area of ​​the shelter.

The Israeli army, which has described Khan Younis as a bastion of Hamas, the militant group that led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, says its forces have surrounded the city after weeks of heavy bombardment and gun battles. On Wednesday, Israeli soldiers surrounded two major hospitals where thousands of Gazans sought safety.

In a statement, the Israeli military accused Hamas of exploiting the civilian population and said the operation in Khan Younis would continue until it dismantled “the Hamas military framework and Hamas strongholds.”

Thousands of civilians now in danger in Khan Younis had fled there to escape airstrikes and shelling in northern Gaza earlier in the war, gathering in shelters and tents on the streets. No place in the city is safe, some say.

“Our last night in Khan Younis felt like judgment day,” said one Gazan, Yafa Abu Aker, on Wednesday morning after walking about five miles from a refugee camp in the city to Rafah, near the Egyptian border. That city is also full of people who have been driven from their homes.

In Khan Younis, Ms. Abu Aker said, she and others took refuge in areas that the Israeli army had designated as safe zones, where they witnessed violent clashes, military aircraft flying overhead, bombs falling, shelling from tanks and gunfire.

“If we had stayed,” she said, “we would have been buried in rubble.”

Wednesday the Israeli army evacuations ordered from parts of the city where there are two hospitals: Nasser, the largest in southern Gaza, and Al-Amal. They are among the last hospitals in Gaza that still provide limited medical care.

Aid groups and local officials said both hospitals were under siege. The Palestinian Red Crescent, which runs Al-Amal, reported “intense shelling” nearby and said an attack had killed three people outside its offices and in a nearby building. Israeli forces “surrounded” Red Crescent workers and “enforced restrictions on movement” around the group's offices and hospital, the report said.

Gaza's Health Ministry said the Nasser Hospital had been cut off for all practical purposes by “continuous bombardment”, preventing wounded people from getting there and blocking the transfer of patients to a nearby Jordanian field hospital. The field hospital was also included in an evacuation zone, the United Nations Humanitarian Affairs Office said Tuesday.

The three hospitals, with a total of more than 600 beds, account for a fifth of the remaining functional hospital capacity in Gaza, according to the UN. It said the evacuation area housed 88,000 residents and an estimated 425,000 displaced people, crammed into about 1.5 square meters. miles.

Doctors Without Borders, the aid group, said late Tuesday that Nasser's aides could hear bombs and heavy gunfire, and that 850 patients and thousands of people sheltering there could not leave because the roads from the hospital were inaccessible or too dangerous. The group said it was “deeply concerned” for people's safety.

The Israeli army has said mortar fire was fired at its troops from the hospital. The claim could not be independently verified.

The attack on the shelter was just the latest attack on a UN facility. The organization says 237 of its buildings have been affected in the war, including 150 of its aid agency for Palestinians.

U.N. officials said the death toll from Wednesday's strike was likely to rise.

Hanan Al-Reifi, who stayed at the shelter, said “many people” had been killed and injured. She said emergency services had not responded to calls for help and people in the shelter had no fire extinguishers.

The attack would likely further fuel accusations that the Israeli military, despite pressure from the Biden administration and others, has not done enough to protect civilians in its campaign to crush Hamas.

Israel launched its offensive after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and capturing about 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Since then, more than 25,000 people have been killed in Gaza, local health officials say, and most of the territory's 2.2 million people have been driven from their homes.

Reporting was contributed by Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Victoria Kim, Farnaz Fassihi And Anushka Patil.