The Ministry of Health in Gaza announced on Wednesday that the number of victims of the Israeli aggression had reached 23,357 dead, in addition to 59,410 injured. The ministry said that the occupation forces had committed 14 massacres in the Gaza Strip, leaving 147 dead and 243 wounded in the past 24 hours.
The Ministry of Health reported that the occupation aircraft had launched a series of raids in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, causing severe material damage to its walls and health service vehicles.
On Wednesday, the government media office in Gaza said that 40 Palestinians were killed or wounded as a result of the occupation bombing of an inhabited house adjacent to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the middle of the Strip, despite the occupation army classifying the targeted area as “safe.”
The office said in a statement that the bombing was “a continuation of the state of deception and lying practiced by the occupation army, after it claimed that the targeted area was safe through its false statements,” noting that the victims were among the displaced.
In a related context, the World Health Organization (WHO) canceled its medical aid mission scheduled for Wednesday due to security concerns. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the canceled mission was the sixth mission to northern Gaza that the organization had canceled due to the failure to approve visit requests, as well as the failure to provide security assurances since the last visit on 26 December.
“Intensive bombing, movement restrictions, fuel shortages, and communications blackouts make it impossible for the WHO and our partners to reach those in need,” he said in a virtual press conference from Geneva. “We call on Israel to approve requests from the World Health Organization and other partners to provide humanitarian aid.”
Meanwhile, the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority said that the Israeli occupation forces had arrested 26 Palestinians in the West Bank in the past hours. The authority added that the occupation forces had arrested 5,780 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the occupied Jerusalem since 7 October.
On Wednesday, the Jordanian city of Aqaba hosted a tripartite summit bringing together Jordanian King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, their first since the outbreak of the war on the Gaza Strip. The summit coincided with a tour by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that included several countries in the region.
On the ground, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, announced that they had targeted an Israeli Merkava tank with an RPG shell north of the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), said that they had targeted military crowds of the occupation army in Khan Yunis with mortar shells.
In the meantime, the Israeli army announced that 17 officers and soldiers were injured in the Gaza battles in the past 24 hours. On Tuesday, the occupation army announced that 9 of its officers and soldiers were killed, and 27 others were injured in the ongoing battles in Gaza.
Moreover, the Anadolu Agency quoted the Israeli Kan TV channel, affiliated with the Israeli Broadcasting Authority (official), that the Director-General of the Ministry of Health had directed all hospitals in Israel to be able to switch to emergency mode within 24 hours of being asked to do so.
The Israeli channel added that the ministry had ordered hospitals to prepare to receive thousands of injured people, due to the increasing intensity of escalation in the northern sector in recent days.
The Israeli ministry also directed the Northern Ziv Hospitals in Safed, and the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, to prepare for the “deserted island situation,” that is, for the possibility of remaining for days without medical supplies, medicines, and food, according to the same source.
