AN Israeli airstrike hit a tent camp in the courtyard of a crowded hospital in central Gaza on Easter Sunday, killing two Palestinians and wounding 15 others, including journalists working nearby.

Only a third of Gaza’s hospitals are even partially functioning, while Israeli strikes kill and wound scores of people every day. Doctors say they are often forced to treat patients on hospital floors because all the beds are taken, and to operate without anaesthetic and other crucial medical supplies. Those wounded in Sunday’s strike lay on the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital floor and gasped while being treated, one clutching at the underside of a stretcher that held someone else.

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An international team of doctors who recently visited the hospital said they were horrified by the war’s gruesome impact on Palestinian children. The World Health Organization's director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says about 9000 patients urgently need to be evacuated abroad for life-saving care but Israel refuses to let them leave.

Not far from Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, dozens of Palestinian Catholics gathered at the Holy Family Church to celebrate Easter. More than 50 of the parishioners have been killed by Israel, including a mother and daughter killed by an Israeli sniper. About 600 people shelter in the compound. Welcome to Israeli racism. If the population was white there wouldn’t be the massacres.

B McKenna
Dumbarton