The Israeli army on Tuesday said that it has captured parliament and other government institutions in Gaza City, AFP reports.
Military units “took over the Hamas parliament, the government building, the Hamas police headquarters and an engineering faculty that served as an institute for the production and development of weapons,” the army said in a statement.
As the Israeli military continues its aerial and ground assaults in the beleaguered Gazan Strip, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have said that the group will attack Israeli vessels in the Bab al-Mandeb strait of the Red Sea, Al Arabiya reported.
Rebel group leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi said that the group will “monitor and search”
for Israeli ships near Yemen’s regional waters. On the othr hand, Britain has added six new designations to its counter-terrorism sanctions list, including four individuals related to Hamas, an update to the UK government website showed.
According to Reuters, the update was published shortly after the United States imposed a third round of sanctions on Hamas, targeting leaders and financiers of the group, following its attack last month on Israel. The US Treasury Department said in a statement its action was taken in coordination with Britain.
Meanwhile, the director of Gaza’s biggest hospital said Tuesday that 179 people, including babies and patients who died in the intensive care unit, had been buried in a “mass grave” at the complex.
“We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” said Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiyah, adding that seven babies and 29 intensive care patients were among those buried after hospital fuel supplies ran out.
“There are bodies littered in the hospital complex and there is no longer electricity at the morgues,” he said, as no fuel has entered the Gaza Strip since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.
On Tuesday, a man and a woman died in the ICU bringing the number of people who had died in the unit to 29, Salmiyah said. A journalist inside the hospital who is collaborating with AFP said the stench of decomposing bodies was everywhere in the facility.
But he said nighttime fighting and air strikes from Monday into Tuesday had been less intense than previous nights.
Israeli tanks have massed at the gates of Al-Shifa hospital, which Israel says conceals an underground command “node” used by Hamas. It is a charge the Palestinian militant group denies.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said hospitals in the Gaza Strip must be protected and he hoped for “less intrusive” action by Israel as Israeli tanks advanced to the gates of the besieged enclave’s main hospital.—Agencies
