Dozens killed in southern Gaza strikes as Israel raids one of last functioning hospitals in north

Author: Editors Desk Source: CBC News:

December 19, 2023 at 17:23

People inspect a destroyed building where Palestinian journalist Adel Zorob was killed overnight by Israeli bombardment of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip Tuesday. (Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images)

Hamas militants continue to put up stiff resistance and lob rockets at Tel Aviv

With nowhere in Gaza to go, Heba Aliwa's family of seven live in a donated car in Rafah.

"This is our life in Rafah," Aliwa told CBC News on Monday. "No water, no food, no drink … no tent, no aid, no nothing.

"This is the seventh place we've come to … This is the seventh place we've been displaced to."

Israel's military said Tuesday that it had killed a prominent Hamas financier in an airstrike on Rafah, without specifying when it occurred or if others had been killed or wounded.

Meanwhile, fierce battles also raged in northern Gaza, which has been reduced to a wasteland seven weeks after Israeli tanks and troops stormed in.

WATCH | The growing push for a shift in war in Gaza:

Heba Aliwa and her husband have nowhere left and call a donated car home. She told freelance journalist Mohamed El Saife in Rafah that their family lives and sleeps in the vehicle, hoping for an end to the war that displaced them.

With nowhere in Gaza to go, Heba Aliwa's family of seven live in a donated car in Rafah.

"This is our life in Rafah," Aliwa told CBC News on Monday. "No water, no food, no drink … no tent, no aid, no nothing.

"This is the seventh place we've come to … This is the seventh place we've been displaced to."Israel's military said Tuesday that it had killed a prominent Hamas financier in an airstrike on Rafah, without specifying when it occurred or if others had been killed or wounded.

Meanwhile, fierce battles also raged in northern Gaza, which has been reduced to a wasteland seven weeks after Israeli tanks and troops stormed in.

WATCH | The growing push for a shift in war in Gaza:

U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Israel to pressure the government to shift to a lower level of intensity of attacks in Gaza as the number of civilians killed grows. Inside Israel, families of people taken by Hamas camp out in protest, calling for immediate negotiations for the release of the remaining hostages.

Hamas resistance continues

Israel's bombardment of the urban Jabalia refugee camp on Tuesday killed at least 27 and wounded more than 100, according to Munir al-Boursh, a senior Health Ministry official. A ministry spokesperson said Sunday that Israeli strikes on the camp in northern Gaza killed 90.

In central Gaza, at least 15 people were killed in strikes overnight, according to hospital records. Among the dead were a mother and her four children, who were killed as they sat around a fire, according to an AP reporter who filmed the aftermath.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said 214 bodies were brought into the territory's hospitals over the last 24 hours, bringing the death toll since the start of the war to more than 19,600. The ministry, considered credible by the United Nations, does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.

An aerial view shows people and machinery around the site of a destroyed building. — People gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Rafah on Tuesday. (Shadi Tabatibi/Reuters)

Hamas has continued to put up stiff resistance and lob rockets at Israel. The militants said they fired a barrage toward Tel Aviv on Tuesday, and air raid sirens went off in central Israel. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The war began after Hamas and other militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel and abducted 240 others, according to a tally by Israeli officials.

Israel's military says 131 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive. Israel says it has killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence, and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, saying the militant group uses them as human shields when it fights in residential areas.

Israel raids Al-Ahli Hospital

Israeli forces raided the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City overnight, according to the church that operates it, destroying a wall at its front entrance and detaining most of its staff.

The facility was the scene of an explosion early in the war that killed dozens of Palestinians, and which an AP investigation later determined was likely caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket.

Don Binder, a pastor at St. George's Anglican Cathedral, which runs the hospital, said the raid left just two doctors, four nurses and two janitors to tend to over 100 seriously wounded patients, with no running water or electricity.

"It has been a great mercy for the many wounded in Gaza City that we were able to keep our Ahli Anglican Hospital open for so long," Binder wrote in a Facebook post late Monday.

"That ended today."

He said an Israeli tank was parked on the rubble at the hospital's entrance, blocking anyone from entering or leaving.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Forces have raided other hospitals across Gaza, accusing Hamas of using them for military purposes. Hospital staff have denied the allegations and accused Israel of endangering critically ill and wounded civilians.

The military said Tuesday that troops found an explosive device inside a clinic in Shijaiyah, a Gaza City neighbourhood that has seen heavy fighting in recent days. It did not say whether the clinic was operational, and in footage released by the military it appeared to have been abandoned.

Hamas has denied using hospitals for militant activities.

With files from CBC News and Reuters