Israeli troops kill 13 children near al-Shifa in a week: rights group

On the Sunday afternoon of 24 March, the Israeli army ordered people living near the al-Shifa medical complex in Palestine’s Gaza, through loudspeakers, to leave their residential area immediately or face having their homes bombed.

The residents were forced to leave the area, crossing a corpse-strewn road that the Israeli army had designated safe for travel.

In a testimony given to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Islam Ali Salouha – who lives close to al-Shifa – said they were only able to walk for a few metres before Israeli soldiers rained bullets on them, particularly targetting his two children, Ali (9) and Saeed (6).

As they tried to retrieve the bodies of the bullet-riddled bodies of the two minors, he said, the Israeli forces opened fire on them again, forcing them to leave the bodies of the two children on the street and continue walking.

Salouha also said the area around the al-Shifa medical complex - the largest healthcare facility in the besieged enclave – had become a hotspot for “field executions” and “murders”, with the bodies of the victims discovered in the streets serving as evidence.

The Israeli army is accused of killing hundreds of people during the ongoing siege of the hospital since March 18.

According to the rights group, the Israeli military has killed at least 13 children through direct gunfire in and around al-Shifa, which has been turned into a military barracks.

“Over the past week, the military has conducted systematic military operations in the area, resulting in extrajudicial killings and deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians, including children aged four to 16,” Euro-Med said.

Fatal shootings occurred both during military sieges and when victims tried to flee designated "safe" routes after being forcibly evacuated from their homes.

“Since Palestinian children make up more than one-third of the dead victims of Israel’s crimes in Gaza…the killing of these children by the Israeli army in such a systematic and widespread manner is clearly intentional,” the report said.

“This serves as further evidence of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, as well as its deliberate destruction of entire generations of Palestinians living there.”

The attack on al-Shifa has drawn global concern to the critical conditions confronting hospitals and their patients, as per local officials.

According to reports, patients remaining at al-Shifa were in dire condition, with wounds starting to be infested with maggots.

Israel has long accused Hamas of using hospitals like al-Shifa in Gaza for military purposes but has failed to prove their claim that the resistance group operated a command and control centre beneath the hospital.

Both Hamas and hospital administrators have denied these allegations.

“The international community must act swiftly and forcefully to defend Palestinian civilians from Israel’s nearly six-month-long genocide in the Gaza Strip,” the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in the report.

“It must also employ effective pressure to put an end to Israel’s grave crimes there, such as its attacks on the al-Shifa medical complex and other medical facilities, and must ensure that Israel complies with the requirements of international law and the rules of war, which specify the need to protect civilians and not target them for any reason.”

In a statement issued on Sunday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli forces were "besieging" two additional hospitals located in the southern city of Khan Younis, namely al-Amal and Nasser.

The Red Crescent said that al-Amal was being targeted with smoke bombs while military vehicles were obstructing the entrances to the compound.

The al-Amal hospital is now out of service and has stopped working completely after Israeli forces forced the hospital’s crews and the wounded to evacuate it and closed its entrances with dirt barriers.

“The occupation forces had resumed their siege of the hospital amid violent bombardment and the firing of smoke bombs and fire towards the hospital, which led to the killing of two people, including our colleague Ameer Abu Aisha, a member of the emergency operations room team in Gaza, in addition to a patient who was being treated in the hospital, and the injury of 3 others,” the Palestinian Red Crescent said in a statement.

Israel, with both aerial bombardment and a ground offensive, has killed nearly 32,500 people since the October 7 cross-border offensive by the Hamas resistance group.

At least 6,250 of these casualties took place since the January 26 ICJ ruling, seen as a damning indictment of Israel’s brutal offensive that has killed a staggering number of women and children and maimed hundreds of thousands in Gaza.