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SvennoJ on 20 April 2024
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PRCS issues plea for missing paramedic who was arrested by Israeli forces

Hudhaifa Mahmoud Abu Eita, a volunteer paramedic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), has been missing for more than 120 days after being taken into Israeli custody from northern Gaza, says the group.

He is one of six PRCS members whose whereabouts are unknown after being arrested by Israeli forces during the Gaza war, said the organisation.

Twenty-seven additional PRCS staff members have been killed in Israeli attacks during the war, including 17 while on the job, according to PRCS, which says its ambulances have repeatedly been fired upon while trying to reach injured Palestinians.



‘World devoid of all human values’

Ahmed Barhoum lost his wife, their five-year-old daughter, and five other relatives in an Israeli air attack on their home in Rafah last night. “This is a world devoid of all human values and morals,” Barhoum told The Associated Press news agency while holding the body of his slain daughter, Alaa.

“They bombed a house full of displaced people, women and children. There were no martyrs but women and children.”



‘Heartbreaking’ scenes of killed children taken for burial after Rafah strike

Within the past hour, the scene of bodies being transferred from al-Najjar Hospital to their final burial was very heartbreaking. The majority were children, wrapped in white sheets soaked in blood.

We spoke to a doctor from the hospital [where the children were brought] who described them as having devastating wounds, soaked in blood.

Their burns were so bad that even if they made it to the hospital alive, they would have quickly lost their lives because there’s no way such injuries could be treated right away given the current situation [at the hospital].


‘Not even the cemetery was spared’

As we reported earlier, the Israeli army hit Gaza’s southern city of Rafah. This is what two residents said about the attacks:

Wissam al-Arja “An Israeli officer called us and told us to evacuate in the next 15 minutes because they will bombard it. So, we evacuated the house, and they bombarded it an hour later; you can see the destruction that occurred. We are civilians.”

Adnan al-Arja “Even the cemetery was not spared from the bombing. This is Rafah, which they say is safe for the displaced to head to. I have no words.”



Heavy artillery shelling north of Nuseirat

Israeli forces have been shelling the town of al-Mughraqa, just north of Nuseirat refugee camp, report our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic. The shelling comes after our early reports that an Israeli air attack hammered the Nuseirat camp itself, destroying at least three homes there.


Rafah the ‘main focus’ of Israeli military in Gaza

The southern city of Rafah has been the main focus for the Israeli military in their operations today, with overnight air strikes killing at least 10 Palestinians. Meanwhile, surveillance drones are hovering at a very low altitude right now.

Israeli forces also recently targeted a residential house in the western part of the Rafah district. There have been no reports of casualties so far in the attack, which seemed to target an empty house that was completely destroyed.

Rafah has been witnessing a surge of Israeli military strikes in the past couple of weeks. This could be seen as a sign that further military incursion could be carried out, specifically in light of the Israeli mobilisation of its troops near the border with Rafah.


Several Israeli surveillance drones are hovering above Rafah

There has been no let-up in the fighting. Right now, we are in central Rafah, and we can clearly see in the sky above the Kuwaiti Hospital at least four Israeli military surveillance drones, hovering at a very low altitude.


Palestinians, including children, examine destroyed and damaged buildings and try to collect their remaining belongings from the rubble in the east of Rafah, Saturday