AN ISRAELI tank shell smashed into the third and fourth floor of the Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza yesterday morning, killing four people and wounding 16, Palestine Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra reported.
The third floor houses an intensive care unit and operating theatres.
Sixty people were reported injured in the tank shell strikes, including 30 medical staff.
After the targeted strike on the hospital and its casualties were confirmed, shells continued to fall around the hospital, with medical staff urgently calling on the Red Cross to help evacuate patients.
Meanwhile, latest reports say Israeli aerial and ground forces are using white phosphorus bombs to pound several residential areas across the besieged Gaza Strip.
The lethal bombs violate all international conventions and are considered as banned weapons in civilian areas. This comes as a Norwegian doctor said Israel is also using cancer-inducing bombs against Palestinian civilians.
Israel used depleted-uranium and white phosphorus shells in the besieged region during their previous assaults. But now Palestinians have been wounded by a new type of weapon that even doctors with previous experience in war zones do not recognise.
The latest revelation comes as Israeli tanks and warplanes keep pounding the besieged enclave, with 39 Palestinians killed yesterday alone.
Sunday was the bloodiest day of the two-week conflict so far. More than 100 Palestinians were killed in the Shejaiya neighbourhood near Gaza City, with the majority of the victims children, women and the elderly.
The latest casualties bring the Palestinian death toll to 510 from 14 days of Israeli attacks. Over 3,000 Palestinians have also been injured in the onslaught.
Medical workers are now raising the alarm over a humanitarian crisis in Gaza where hospitals are running low on basic medical supplies.
Israeli tanks and warplanes continued pounding the Gaza Strip for the 14th day yesterday.
Ashraf al-Qidra, a Gaza Health Ministry official, said yesterday that 20 bodies were retrieved at a home destroyed in an overnight airstrike in Khan Younis.
At least 26 members of the Abu Jami family were killed by Israeli shelling, after more bodies were pulled from the rubble.
