Gaza hospital director receives bodies of brother and other relatives while on duty

On Friday, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya left his family home for a shift as the director of the Al-Shifa Hospital. A day later, the bodies of six family members arrived while he was still on duty.

An Israeli airstrike hit his home in the Al Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, where multiple generations had been living together, the doctor said.

“This is the family home where we live. My brother, two of my brother’s sons, my nephew’s wife, and two of their children were martyred,” Abu Salmiya told CNN.

The strike on Abu Salmiya’s family home killed six people and injured seven others, including the hospital director’s sister, niece and nephews, he said.

CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the target of the strikes.

A video shared by the director general of Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, showed a grief-stricken Abu Salmiya kneeling next to the bodies of his family members at the hospital, still wearing his doctor’s scrubs.

“We pray that God grants patience and strength to his heart and the hearts of his family,” Al-Bursh said in a post on social media.

Gaza’s civil defense said they rescued four injured people and recovered three bodies at the home in Gaza’s northern beach area.

“A missing person remains buried under the rubble. Our crews are trying to reach him and retrieve him,” the civil defense said.

The latest assault comes as global outcry intensifies over Israel’s attempts to capture Gaza City. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been fleeing the city, where Israel has been demolishing high-rise buildings.

Israel says the city, Gaza’s largest, remains a Hamas stronghold. The group’s military wing issued an image of the remaining Israeli hostages it is holding, warning the incursion in Gaza City means that Israel has lost any chance of getting its hostages out of the territory.

Israel’s military on Saturday said it had struck more than 120 “terrorist targets” since the start of its ground operation in Gaza City.

In a statement, the IDF said during several days of fighting Israeli troops had discovered tunnel shafts and underground passages and “located submachine guns and ammunition hidden in civilian structures.” It also claimed to have “eliminated more than 30 terrorists.”

The IDF also said it was “creating a corridor to enable the movement of the civilian population southward for their safety.”

The statement came as graphic videos shared by Palestinians on social media and geolocated by CNN showed the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike that hit a truck transporting displaced people on Al-Shifa Street, west of Gaza City.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said at least 90 people had been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza City on Saturday. The deaths were recorded at the Al-Shifa Hospital, Baptist Hospital, Jordanian Hospital and the Al-Quds Hospital in the city.

More than 65,200 Palestinian people in Gaza have been killed since October 7, 2023, according to the latest figures from the Palestinian health ministry.

The United Nations and others have warned that the assault will worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis, with parts of Gaza officially declared under famine.

This week, an independent United Nations inquiry concluded for the first time that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which Israel firmly denies.

[Source: CNN News]