32 babies in critical condition are among the patients left at Gaza's main hospital, UN team says
Khan Younis (Gaza Strip) (AP): A United Nations team said Sunday that 291 patients were left at Gaza's largest hospital after Israeli troops had others evacuate. Those left included 32 babies in extremely critical condition, trauma patients with severely infected wounds and others with spinal injuries who are unable to move.
The team was able to tour Shifa Hospital for an hour after about 2,500 displaced people, mobile patients and medical staff left the sprawling compound Saturday morning, said the World Health Organization, which led the mission.
"Patients and health staff with whom they spoke were terrified for their safety and health, and pleaded for evacuation," the agency said, describing Shifa as a death zone. It said more teams will attempt to reach Shifa in coming days to try to evacuate the patients to southern Gaza, where hospitals are also overwhelmed.
Israeli troops are staying in the hospital. Israel's military has been searching Gaza City's Shifa Hospital for a Hamas command center that it alleges is located under the facility - a claim Hamas and hospital staff deny.
Saturday's mass departure was portrayed by Israel as voluntary, but described by some of those leaving as a forced exodus.
"We left at gunpoint," Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. "Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside." He said he saw Israeli troops detain three men.
Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone. It caused massive destruction in the camp's Fakhoura school, said wounded survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.
"The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help," Radwan said by phone. AP photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.
The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, said only that its troops were active in the area "with the aim of hitting terrorists." It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimize civilian harm.
"Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced," Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter.
In southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel's forces have begun operating in eastern Gaza City while continuing its mission in western areas. "With every passing day, there are fewer places where Hamas terrorists can operate," he said, adding that Hamas would learn that in southern Gaza "in the coming days."
His comments were the clearest indication yet that the military plans to expand its offensive to southern Gaza, where Israel had told Palestinian civilians to flee early in the war.
The evacuation zone is already crammed with displaced civilians, and it was not clear where they would go if the offensive moves closer.
What led to the Shifa Hospital evacuation wasn't immediately known. Israel's military said it was asked by the hospital's director to help those who would like to leave do so, and that it did not order an evacuation. But Medhat Abbas, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry in Gaza, said the military ordered the facility cleared and gave the hospital an hour to get people out.
The U.N. team visiting after the evacuation said 25 medical staff remained, along with the patients. The World Health Organization said that in the next 24-72 hours, pending guarantees of safe passage, more missions were being arranged to evacuate to the Nasser Medical Complex and the European Gaza Hospital in southern Gaza.
Twenty-five of Gaza's hospitals aren't functioning due to a lack of fuel, damage and other problems, and the other 11 are only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.
Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive, claiming they were used as Hamas command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.
Internet and phone services were restored Saturday to Gaza, ending a telecommunications outage that had forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.
More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the Israeli military would have "full freedom" to operate within the territory after the war. The comments again put him in conflict with U.S. visions for a post-war Gaza.
In an op-ed published Saturday in The Washington Post, United States President Joe Biden said Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited and governed under a "revitalized Palestinian Authority" while world leaders work toward a peaceful two-state solution. Netanyahu has long opposed a Palestinian state.
The U.S. is providing weapons and intelligence support to Israel in its offensive to root out Hamas.
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Supreme Court rejects plea for reverting to ballots in elections
New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition seeking to revert to ballot paper voting in elections in the country.
"What happens is, when you win the election, EVMs (electronic voting machine) are not tampered. When you lose the election, EVMs are tampered (with)," remarked a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and P B Varale.
Apart from ballot paper voting, the plea sought several directions including a directive to the Election Commission to disqualify candidates for a minimum of five years if found guilty of distributing money, liquor or other material inducement to the voters during polls.
When petitioner-in-person K A Paul said he filed the PIL, the bench said, "You have interesting PILs. How do you get these brilliant ideas?".
The petitioner said he is the president of an organisation which has rescued over three lakh orphans and 40 lakh widows.
"Why are you getting into this political arena? Your area of work is very different," the bench retorted.
After Paul revealed he had been to over 150 countries, the bench asked him whether each of the nations had ballot paper voting or used electronic voting.
The petitioner said foreign countries had adopted ballot paper voting and India should follow suit.
"Why you don't want to be different from the rest of the world?" asked the bench.
There was corruption and this year (2024) in June, the Election Commission announced they had seized Rs 9,000 crore, Paul responded.
"But how does that make your relief which you are claiming here relevant?" asked the bench, adding "if you shift back to physical ballot, will there be no corruption?".
Paul claimed CEO and co-founder of Tesla, Elon Musk, stated that EVMs could be tampered with and added TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, the current chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, and former state chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy had claimed EVMs could be tampered with.
"When Chandrababu Naidu lost, he said EVMs can be tampered with. Now this time, Jagan Mohan Reddy lost, he said EVMs can be tampered with," noted the bench.
When the petitioner said everybody knew money was distributed in elections, the bench remarked, "We never received any money for any elections."
The petitioner said another prayer in his plea was the formulation of a comprehensive framework to regulate the use of money and liquor during election campaigns and ensuring such practices were prohibited and punishable under the law.
The plea further sought a direction to mandate an extensive voter education campaign to raise awareness and importance of informed decision making.
"Today, 32 per cent educated people are not casting their votes. What a tragedy. If democracy will be dying like this and we will not be able to do anything then what will happen in the years to come in future," the petitioner said.
