Zionists pound Gaza; 49 bodies found in hospital
RAFAH: The Zionist entity bombarded Rafah on Wednesday and the military said ground troops conducted “targeted raids” in the southern Gazan city, as negotiations to halt the seven-month war resumed in Cairo. The Zionist entity has defied international objections and sent tanks into Rafah, which is crowded with Palestinian civilians sheltering near the Egyptian border, seizing on Tuesday a crossing that is the main conduit for aid into the besieged territory.
The White House condemned the interruption to humanitarian deliveries, with a senior US official later revealing Washington had paused a shipment of bombs last week after the Zionist entity failed to address concerns over its long-threatened Rafah operation. The Zionist military on Wednesday said it was reopening another major aid crossing into Gaza, Kerem Shalom, as well as the Erez crossing, both on the territory’s border with the Zionist entity.
But the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said the Kerem Shalom crossing — which the Zionist entity shut after a rocket attack killed four soldiers on Sunday — remained closed. It came after a night of heavy Zionist strikes and shelling across Gaza. AFPTV footage showed Palestinians scrambling in the dark to pull survivors, bloodied and caked in dust, out from under the rubble of a Rafah building. “We are living in Rafah in extreme fear and endless anxiety,” said Muhanad Ahmad Qishta, 29. “Places the (Zionist) army claims to be safe are also being bombed,” he told AFP.
In devastated northern Gaza, Al-Ahli hospital said a strike on an apartment in Gaza City killed seven family members and wounded several other people. The Zionist military said it had struck over 100 targets across the Gaza Strip throughout Tuesday. It added in a statement that its “troops are conducting targeted raids on the Gazan side of Rafah crossing in the eastern part of Rafah”.
An emergency doctor working in Rafah and nearby Khan Yunis said that with humanitarian access compromised, the health situation was “catastrophic”. “The smell of sewage is rife everywhere,” said the doctor, James Smith. “It’s been getting worse over the course of the last couple of days.” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday hospitals in the Gaza Strip’s south had only “three days of fuel left” because of the border closures. “Without fuel all humanitarian operations will stop”, he posted on X.
Meanwhile, the Hamas-run government media office said health workers had uncovered at least 49 bodies from the premises of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, the territory’s largest which was devastated by two weeks of fighting in March. The bodies were recovered from “a third mass grave” at Al-Shifa, following the discovery of some 30 bodies last month, said Motassem Salah, head of the hospital’s emergency department.
AFP footage from Al-Shifa hospital showed at least a dozen bodies wrapped in black plastic body bags. Standing in front of the ruins of the hospital, which was devastated by two weeks of fighting in March, Salah said several of the bodies had decomposed. On Wednesday, the media office said health workers continued to uncover bodies from the complex. So far 520 bodies have been recovered from “seven mass graves” found at three different hospitals across Gaza in recent weeks, the media office said.
The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 34,844 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry. Talks aimed at agreeing a ceasefire resumed in Cairo on Wednesday “in the presence of all parties”, Egyptian state-linked media reported. A senior Hamas official said the latest round of negotiations would be “decisive”.