Thousands of civilians were trapped in southern Gaza by bombardment and fighting on Saturday, a day after the top UN court ruled Israel must prevent genocidal acts. The growing alarm has focused on Khan Yunis, the biggest city in Gaza's south, where the two main hospitals were barely functioning under the weight of the relentless bombardment and the press of thousands in need.
Witnesses reported more overnight strikes on Khan Yunis, the current epicenter of Israel's assault on Gaza, and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said some of the dead and wounded had been taken to the city's barely functioning Al-Amal hospital.
The strikes came after the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that Israel must prevent possible acts of genocide in its war against Hamas.
The court, which has virtually no enforcement power, stopped short of calling for an end to the fighting but also said in its ruling that Israel must facilitate "urgently needed" humanitarian assistance.
"This is the first time the world has told Israel that it is out of line," said Maha Yasin, a 42-year-old displaced Palestinian woman in Gaza.
"What Israel did to us in Gaza for four months has never happened in history."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the case as "outrageous".
The health ministry in Gaza says the offensive has killed at least 26,083 people, about 70 percent of them women and children.
- Hospital services 'collapse' -
Fierce fighting has raged for days around Khan Yunis, forcing tens of thousands to flee further south to Rafah on the border with Egypt. With a humanitarian crisis growing in Khan Yunis and northern areas of Gaza, UN agencies say most of the estimated 1.7 million Palestinians displaced by the war are crowded into Rafah.
At Khan Yunis's Nasser Hospital, the largest in the besieged city, Doctors Without Borders said surgical capacity was "virtually non-existent".
The international medical aid organization said in a news release that medical services at the hospital had "collapsed" and the few staff who remained "must contend with very low supplies that are insufficient to handle mass casualty events".
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media platform X that 350 patients and 5,000 people displaced by the fighting remained at the hospital and that fighting in the vicinity continued. He said the Nasser Hospital was "running out of food, fuel and supplies" and called for an immediate ceasefire so they could be replenished.
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