The European Union on Sunday condemned Hamas for using "hospitals and civilians as human shields" in Gaza, while also urging Israel to show "maximum restraint" to protect civilians.
Hospitals in the north of the Palestinian enclave are blockaded by Israeli forces and barely able to care for those inside, according to medical staff. Gaza's largest and second largest hospitals, Al Shifa and Al-Quds, said they were suspending operations.
Israel says Hamas has placed
command centres under and near hospitals and it needs to get at them to free around 200 hostages the militants took in Israel in an attack just over a month ago. Hamas has denied using hospitals in this way.
"The EU condemns the use of hospitals and civilians as human shields by Hamas," European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement issued on behalf of the 27-nation bloc. "Civilians must be allowed to leave the combat zone."
At the same time, he urged Israel to exercise maximum restraint, stressing the obligation under international humanitarian law to protect hospitals, medical supplies and civilians inside hospitals.
"These hostilities are severely impacting hospitals and taking a horrific toll on civilians and medical staff," Borrell warned.
"Hospitals must ... be supplied immediately with the most urgent medical supplies, and patients that require urgent medical care need to be evacuated safely," he added. "In this context, we urge Israel to exercise maximum restraint to ensure the protection of civilians."
The European Union on Sunday condemned Hamas for using "hospitals and civilians as human shields" in Gaza, while also urging Israel to show "maximum restraint" to protect civilians.
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Doctors and the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza have said a lack of fuel there means patients cannot be operated on and incubators for premature babies cannot run. But the president disputed this.
"We deny this at all, there is a lot of spin by Hamas... but there's electricity in Shifa, everything is operating," Mr Herzog said.
Israel has said that Hamas has a base underneath the hospital building - a claim denied by Hamas.
Isaac Herzog told the BBC "everything is operating" at Al-Shifa, despite reports of no power.
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Hamas meticulously planned and prepared for a massacre of Israeli civilians on a scale that was highly likely to provoke Israel’s government into sending troops into Gaza, analysts said. Indeed, Hamas leaders have publicly expressed a willingness to accept heavy losses — potentially including the deaths of many Gazan civilians living under Hamas rule.
“Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas politburo, told Beirut’s LCBI television in an interview aired on Oct. 24. “We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.”
Since the start of the ground invasion, other Hamas leaders have publicly exulted about what they perceive to be a strategic victory over Israel. Hamad declared in the Lebanese interview that Hamas was prepared to carry out the same kind of attack against Israel “again and again.”
“There will be a second, a third, a fourth” attack, Hamad said, according to a translation of his remarks by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington nonprofit.
Evidence gleaned since Oct. 7 shows Hamas terrorists prepared for a “second phase” of assaults amid hopes of inspiring violence in the West Bank and beyond.
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