The Israeli military has denied it was behind the bombing of an ambulance in central Gaza yesterday, which killed four medics and two other people.
“A review was conducted based on the details provided to the IDF (Israeli military) which shows that no strike was carried out in the described area,” the army said in a statement to AFP.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society had said six people were killed in an Israeli strike on their ambulance at the entrance to the Deir al-Balah area of central Gaza.
The roof of the ambulance was completely destroyed and part of the vehicle crushed, AFP photos show.
Jagan Chapagain, the head of the International Federation for Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, called the attack “unacceptable” in a social media post and said “I strongly condemn their killing.”
Crowds of mourners gathered today for the funerals of the medics, a shredded and bloodied Palestinian Red Crescent uniform placed atop one of the white shrouds.
The Red Crescent said the ambulance had been on Salah al-Din Road, a highway running north-south through Gaza that has in the past been used by thousands of Palestinians fleeing the Israeli military advance.
More than 23,350 people have been killed, mostly civilians, in more than three months of war between Hamas and Israel, according to the latest Gaza health ministry toll.
Before yesterday’s ambulance strike, the health ministry said more than 120 ambulances had been destroyed and at least 326 healthcare workers killed since the start of the conflict.
The war erupted with the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, which resulted in around 1,200 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians.
The Israeli military says 186 soldiers have since been killed fighting in Gaza.
Since the New Year, Israel has announced a new phase in the war, to begin drawing down forces in the northern half of Gaza where its offensive began. Even so, fighting has only intensified in southern areas.
The relative quiet in the north has let residents begin trickling back into obliterated cities, finding a moonscape often with scant trace of where homes once stood.
Yousef Fares, a freelance journalist, filmed himself walking through a wasteland surrounded by scorched ruins that was once apart of Gaza City, home to nearly a million people. A few civilians passed by, some wobbling on bicycles over a track across the mud.
“All the houses you see are destroyed, completely or partially,” he said.
“We are now at the Tuffah old cemetery, which is over 100 years old. All those graves were exhumed, they were run over by the Israeli bulldozers and tanks. People are coming from various areas of Gaza City to search for the bodies of their sons.”
Abu Ayesh, who returned to a nearby part of Gaza City, told Reuters by phone that the destruction was “earthquake-like”.
“I tell (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu that Gaza will be rebuilt, we will build our homes and we will rebury our dead.”
While the US has backed Israel’s military campaign as justified by its right to self-defence, it has also called on its ally to scale the war back, do more to protect civilians, and maintain the hope of a future independent Palestinian state.
This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the region, meeting Israeli and Palestinian officials and leaders of neighbouring Arab States, defending Israel’s campaign to eradicate Hamas but pushing for it to work with the Palestinian Authority (PA), which recognises Israel.
Israel has been vague about its ultimate intentions but says it wants security control of Gaza indefinitely and will not hand it to the PA, which exercises limited self rule in the Israeli occupied West Bank but was pushed out of Gaza in 2007 by Hamas.
Some far-right members of Mr Netanyahu’s coalition government have openly called for Palestinians to leave Gaza and Israelis to settle there permanently.
In a post on X, Mr Netanyahu insisted this was not Israel’s aim.
“Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population,” he wrote.
“Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists, not the Palestinian population, and we are doing so in full compliance with international law.”
