Israeli forces yesterday pressed their offensive against Hamas in northern Gaza, battling militants around a hospital where thousands of patients and displaced people have been sheltering for weeks, raising Palestinian fears of another painful standoff and evacuation of a medical facility.
A shell struck the second floor of the Indonesia Hospital, killing at least 12 people, a medical worker inside the facility and the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said.
Both blamed Israeli forces. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Photo: AFP
The advance came a day after the WHO evacuated 31 premature babies from Al-Shifa Hospital. At least 28 were transported to Egypt yesterday. More than 250 critically ill or wounded patients remain stranded at the compound that Israeli forces stormed days ago.
The plight of Gaza’s hospitals is the focus of a battle of narratives over the war’s brutal toll on Palestinian civilians, thousands of whom have been killed or buried in rubble since the conflict was sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel. In the wake of the assault, Israeli leaders vowed to eradicate Hamas, destroy its ability to rule Gaza and uproot its militant infrastructure.
Israel says Hamas uses civilians as human shields and operated a major command hub inside and beneath Al-Shifa, while critics say Israel’s siege and relentless aerial bombardment amount to collective punishment of the territory’s 2.3 million Palestinians.
Marwan Abdallah, the medical worker at the Indonesia Hospital, said that Israeli tanks were operating less than 200m from the hospital, and that Israeli snipers were on the roofs of nearby buildings.
As he spoke over the phone, the sound of gunfire could be heard in the background.
Abdallah said the hospital had received dozens of dead and wounded in airstrikes and shelling overnight.
Gaza health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said that about 600 patients, 200 healthcare workers and 2,000 displaced people are sheltering there.
“The occupation aims to evacuate the hospital, as it did in Al-Shifa,” he said.
In a separate development that could relieve some of the pressure on Gaza’s collapsing health system, dozens of trucks yesterday entered the territory from Egypt with equipment from Jordan to set up a field hospital.
Jordan’s state-run media said the field hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis would be up and running within 48 hours.
Babies evacuated from Gaza’s embattled Al-Shifa hospital arrived in Egypt, the country’s state-run media said, after the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said it was transporting 28 premature babies across the border.
It was not immediately clear where the other three babies who were evacuated from Al-Shifa were.
ELIGIBLE FOR JANUARY: All presidential candidates and their running mates meet the requirements to run for office, and none hold dual citizenship, the CEC said Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Legislator and vice presidential candidate Cynthia Wu (吳欣盈) is working with the Central Election Commission (CEC) to resolve issues with her financial disclosure statement, a spokesman for the candidate said yesterday, after the commission published the statements of all three presidential candidates and their running mates, while confirming their eligibility to run in the Jan. 13 election. Wu’s office spokesman, Chen Yu-cheng (陳宥丞), said the candidate encountered unforeseen difficulties disclosing her husband’s finances due to being suddenly thrust into the campaign. She is also the first vice presidential nominee to have a foreign spouse, complicating the reporting of
GOOD NEWS: Although open civic spaces are shrinking in Asia-Pacific countries and territories, Taiwan’s openness is a positive sign, an expert said Taiwan remains the only country in Asia with an “open” civic space for the fifth consecutive year, the Civicus Monitor said in a report released yesterday. The People Power Under Attack 2023 report named Taiwan as one of only 37 open countries or territories out of 198 globally, and the only one in Asia. Compiled by Civicus — a global alliance of civil society organizations dedicated to bolstering civil action — the ranking compiled annually since 2017 measures the state of freedom of association, peaceful assembly and expression around the world. Researchers assign each country or territory one of five rankings describing the
NOT JUST CHIPS: Although semiconductor processes are on the list, it also includes military technology and post-quantum cryptography to combat emerging cyberthreats The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released a list of 22 technologies it considers crucial to the nation’s security and competitiveness, including the 14-nanometer semiconductor process and advanced chip packaging. For the first time, the council made a list of core technologies with an aim of preventing secret information about those technologies being leaked to foreign countries, which could put the nation’s security and the competitiveness of local industries at risk. For years, local semiconductor companies have faced challenges from talent poaching and theft of corporate secrets by Chinese competitors, who are seeking to rapidly advance their technology capabilities through
Japanese are more likely to view China as a major threat than Taiwanese, although both sides agree that Beijing’s power and influence are the most concerning geopolitical hazard, a Pew Research Center poll showed on Tuesday. From June 2 to Sept. 17, Pew researchers polled respondents in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong on perceived threats posed by China, the US, Russia and North Korea. China’s power and influence was considered the greatest threat above North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, or US or Russian influence, the report said. Japanese respondents showed the most concern over China, with 76 percent calling it a