Israeli attack on hospital in Gaza leaves 4 dead and 17 injured, says WHO director | World

An Israeli attack on Al-Aqsa hospital, in the Gaza Strip, killed 4 people and injured 17 others this Sunday (31), according to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO).

“A WHO team was on a humanitarian mission at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza when a tent camp inside the hospital complex was hit by an Israeli airstrike today. Four people were killed and 17 were injured. All WHO staff are safe,” Adhanom wrote on his X (formerly Twitter) account.

The WHO team on site was at the hospital assessing the facility’s needs and collecting incubators to be sent to northern Gaza.

The attack comes amid talks of a new round of negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Hamas has not yet decided whether it will send a delegation to negotiations on a truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip, a leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement told AFP this Sunday (31).

“There is still no indication or decision on the part of Hamas about sending a delegation (…) to a new round of negotiations in Cairo or Doha,” the representative of the Islamist group, who requested anonymity, told AFP .

Negotiations between Hamas and Israel, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, were expected to resume this Sunday in Cairo, according to the Egyptian television channel Al Qahera.

On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized a new round of negotiations between the two parties.

Mediators had hoped to reach a ceasefire before Ramadan, the holy month of Islam in which Muslims observe a fast, but were unable to reach an agreement.

The representative of Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007, added that there are too many differences between the two sides to make progress possible.

“I doubt there will be any progress in the negotiations because the positions are very far apart. Netanyahu is not serious and is not interested,” the representative of the Palestinian Islamist movement, at war with Israel in Gaza since October 7, told AFP.

The resolution, made by a group of ten countries with rotating seats on the Security Council led by Mozambique, is the first to be approved on a ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.

Israel has been carrying out a military offensive in Palestinian territory since Hamas terrorists invaded Israeli territory and killed hundreds of people in October 2023.

Approval, however, is not a solution to war. The challenge now is to ensure that the actors involved in it – the Israeli government and the terrorist group – comply with the determinations required in the UN text.

This is because, although Security Council resolutions are legally binding, in practice they end up ignored by many countries.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the Israeli government to comply with the council’s decision.

This report is being updated.