12:30 p.m. ET, November 21, 2023
Israeli strikes hit northern Gaza while paralyzed hospitals continue receiving patients
Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu/Getty Images
Wounded men, women and children were taken to hospitals in Gaza after Israeli airstrikes on the Jabalya area in northern Gaza, Reuters videos shot on Tuesday show.
“They destroyed our homes over our heads, we thought we were safe,” an unidentified woman at one hospital said, according to Reuters.
The Israel Defense Forces said early Tuesday that the Israeli Air Force was “preparing the battlefield” by focusing on “terror targets” in Jabalya.
“During the battle, the division struck three tunnel shafts in the area of Jabalya, in which terrorists were hiding,” the IDF said.
One resident of the nearby neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan, Yasser Abu Watfa, told CNN that the conditions in Jabalya are “scary,” but many people living there have not evacuated.
Gaza’s worsening health crisis: Doctors at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza continued working amid fuel, power, food and water shortages as Israeli tanks surrounded the building, according to a post by the hospital.
“The situation is very dangerous and difficult, the occupation tanks and military vehicles and occupation soldiers are positioned in the vicinity of the Indonesian hospital and a state of fear and horror by the civilians in the hospital,” journalist Anas Al-Sharif, who was at the hospital, told CNN.
“The bodies are piled on top of each other inside the hospital, the smell of death is everywhere,” Al-Sharif said.
Large plumes of smoke were seen rising from Gaza early Tuesday as strikes continued early morning, according to live video feeds. Israel has ordered Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza as it targets Hamas infrastructure and fighters.
CNN is reaching out to the IDF for comment on any shelling in the vicinity of Al-Awda.
Ashraf Al-Qudra, the spokesperson of the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, said that the health sector of the north “completely collapsed.”
“The hospitals in northern Gaza are all completely closed, and there is no medical service that can be provided in the north,” he said.