Northern Gaza: 1,000 martyrs in 23 days; 4 journalists killed today

GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Four Palestinian journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school in western Gaza City on Sunday. The strike was the second targeting the Asma School in the Shati refugee camp. The school, run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), shelters displaced families and had previously been bombed last week. Medical and media sources reported that eight citizens were killed including four journalists.

The Government Media Office (GMO) condemned, in the strongest terms, the targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation army, holding it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime. In a press statement, the GMO called on the international community and relevant organizations to deter the occupation and pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, urging for pressure to stop the genocide and the killing of Palestinian journalists. With the death of the four journalists, the toll of journalist martyrs since the start of the genocidal war on Gaza has risen to 181.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that 1,000 citizens have been martyred in northern Gaza over the past 23 days, noting that the fate of 30 medical personnel detained from Kamal Adwan Hospital is unknown. The ministry’s spokesperson Khalil al-Daqran held the occupation army responsible for the lives of the medical teams detained from Kamal Adwan Hospital, indicating that the occupation has rendered the health system in the north non-functional to kill as many citizens as possible. Al-Daqran emphasized in media statements that the situation in besieged northern Gaza is extremely difficult, reiterating his plea for the world to intervene immediately to save the citizens in the north before it is too late.

Health authorities announced on Saturday that the occupation army had detained all male medical staff from Kamal Adwan Hospital, along with several injured and sick patients, calling on all international and humanitarian organizations to urgently intervene to protect patients and medical personnel. The World Health Organization confirmed today that Kamal Adwan Hospital, “the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza,” was attacked, and 44 male staff members were detained, leaving only one female employee, the hospital director, and one doctor to care for about 200 patients in urgent need of treatment.

WHO said that the entire health system in Gaza has been under attack for over a year, emphasizing the need to protect hospitals from conflicts at all times, reiterating that any attack on healthcare facilities constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law. On October 5, 2024, the occupation army launched a wide and unprecedented assault on the Jabalia camp and extensive areas in northern Gaza, before storming them the next day under the pretext of preventing resistance from regaining strength in the region, amid fears of forced displacement.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel, with US support, has been waging a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, resulting in over 143,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of whom are children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amidst massive destruction and famine that has claimed the lives of dozens of children and the elderly in one of the worst global humanitarian disasters.