‘THE Israeli occupation bears direct responsibility for the Baptist Hospital massacre and that its flagrant lies will not fool anyone,’ declared Hamas yesterday.
Hamas said: ‘The occupation is putting out a false front and pushing it with overt propaganda in an attempt to avoid holding responsibility for the Baptist Hospital massacre.
‘Baptist Hospital and 22 other hospitals and medical facilities, housing medical personnel, patients, and injured people, are all under threat from this fascist occupation. The Israeli occupation has bombed 23 ambulances and killed more than 25 doctors and their families so far.
‘They (the occupation forces) are the ones who killed more than 3,000 Palestinian civilians, 70% of whom were children and women, by destroying entire residential neighbourhoods and 120,000 housing units on the heads of their residents.
‘This horrible massacre was caused directly by the fascist occupation, which provided multiple accounts of the events starting within the first hour of the massacre,’ Hamas concluded.
Earlier on Wednesday, Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad described the Israel army’s accusation that it was responsible for a strike on a Gaza hospital as ‘lies that have no basis.’
‘The Zionist enemy is trying hard to evade its responsibility for the brutal massacre it committed by bombing the Baptist Arab National Hospital in Gaza through his usual fabrication of lies and by pointing the finger of blame at the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine,’ it said in a statement.
‘We therefore affirm that the accusations put forward by the enemy are false and baseless,’ it stressed.
According to the statement, the hospital had been ordered to evacuate by Israel under threat of bombardment, and it was a bomb dropped by an Israeli army plane that caused the tragedy.
It said the hospital had ‘received public notice made global of evacuation under threat of bombing’.
Head of Hamas’ political bureau Ismail Haneyya stressed that the Israeli occupation regime is delusional if it thinks its massacres in Gaza will stop the Palestinian people’s resistance.
‘The resistance is ongoing and will not stop without the occupation leaving our land and holy sites,’ Haneyya said in a speech on Tuesday evening.
‘Those who committed the (Al-Ahli) Baptist Hospital massacre are the ones who perpetrated the Sabra and Shatila massacre and the Bahr Al-Baqar School massacre, killed prisoners of the Egyptian army, and violated all human values known on Earth,’ Haneyya said.
Haneyya held the Americans responsible for the Israeli massacre at the hospital, saying they gave the Israeli regime unlimited cover for its crimes in Gaza.
The Hamas leader urged the Palestinians across the occupied territories to participate in massive rallies in solidarity with Gaza.
He also called on the world’s free people, the UN, the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the human rights and legal organisations around the world to clearly condemn Israel’s heinous massacre at the Al-Ahli Hospital and the mass killing of civilians in Gaza.
The Hamas movement has called for organising massive angry rallies all over the world in protest at the appalling Israeli massacre at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City and the ongoing genocide that is being committed by the Israeli occupation army in the Gaza Strip.
In a statement on Tuesday night, Hamas urged the Palestinian masses in the West Bank and 1948 occupied Palestine, the Arab and Muslim nations and the world’s free people to take to the streets of their towns and cities and organise daily rallies in order to pressure for an end to Israel’s military aggression and massacres in Gaza.
Immediately following the Al-Ahli Hospital massacre, dozens of angry marches took place across the West Bank, where Palestinian youths clashed with the Israeli occupation forces in different areas.
Russia and China condemn hospital bombing
CHINA and Russia have issued condemnations of a bombing that targeted a crowded hospital in the small blockaded Palestinian territory of Gaza, with Moscow challenging the Israeli regime to provide facts to prove its claims it was not involved in the attack.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that the attack on al-Ahli Arabi hospital in Gaza a day earlier was shocking and ‘an act of dehumanisation.’
Zakharova said, however, that Israel should prove its claims that it was not behind the attack that killed at least 500 people, mostly women and children, by providing unedited satellite images. She said the US could also provide such imagery.
‘Regarding our assessment, we certainly qualify such an act as a crime, as an act of dehumanisation,’ Zakharova said Wednesday on her Radio Sputnik program.
‘We are now seeing a desire from Israel to absolve responsibility,’ she continued. ‘If there are serious intentions … to prove it was not involved and is innocent, then it needs not only to comment in the media and on social networks, but to provide facts,’ she added.
The Israeli regime has denied responsibility for the hospital attack by saying that the huge explosion that destroyed the facility late on Tuesday was caused by a malfunctioning rocket launched by the Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad.
The Palestinians and almost all governments in the region have squarely blamed the Israeli regime for the attack.
Meanwhile, China said on Wednesday that it was ‘shocked by and strongly condemns’ the attack on Gaza hospital.
‘China calls for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the war,’ said the Chinese foreign ministry in a statement.
‘Russian authorities had previously criticised Israel and its main ally, the US, for fueling a decades-long crisis in Palestine that led to the bloody confrontations in the occupied territories and in Gaza this month.
Moscow has warned that Washington’s decision to move warships to waters close to the Israeli-occupied territories would escalate the war.
Nearly 3,500 people have been killed in more than 10 days of Israeli airstrikes and shelling against Gaza, a small territory with a population of 2.3 million people on the Mediterranean Sea which is under a constant Israeli blockade.
The Israeli attacks on Gaza began on October 7 after the Gaza-based Hamas resistance movement launched waves of attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories, killing 1,400 settlers and military forces.
The United States vetoed on Wednesday a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have called for humanitarian pauses in the conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas to allow humanitarian aid access to the Gaza Strip.
The vote on the Brazilian-drafted text was twice delayed in the past couple of days as the United States tries to broker aid access to Gaza. Twelve members voted in favour of the draft text on Wednesday, while Russia and Britain abstained.
China and Russia have issued condemnations of a bombing that targeted a crowded hospital in the small blockaded Palestinian territory of Gaza, with Moscow challenging the Israeli regime to provide facts to prove its claims it was not involved in the attack.
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