This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in northern Gaza, where Israeli soldiers launched a full-scale attack on Jabaliya earlier today, blowing up a dozen residential buildings. Gaza officials described the attack as a “major massacre” and warned of mass casualties, with more than 150 people reportedly killed or injured.
Late Thursday, Israeli forces stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, expelling patients and staff, after earlier surrounding and shelling what was essentially the last hospital left standing in the area. Soldiers carried out mass arrests. Doctors say babies and children have died after being cut off from their oxygen supplies. Kamal Adwan’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, says the situation is catastrophic and there’s nowhere patients in northern Gaza can go for treatment.
This comes as displaced mothers in northern Gaza are calling on the world to demand the resumption of the polio vaccination campaign for children there, which the World Health Organization said Wednesday had been postponed due to Israeli attacks and lack of access.
HANAN HEMEDA: [translated] If the polio vaccination is not available in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, the children will be paralyzed. They will collapse in front of our eyes. They won’t move. Is this fair? We demand the world to allow the entry of the polio vaccination into the northern part of the Gaza Strip to protect our children from the polio virus.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, Democracy Now! reached Dr. Mohammed Salha, acting director of Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabaliya refugee camp in north Gaza late Thursday night. He described what’s happening on the ground.
DR. MOHAMMED SALHA: Today is the 20th day of siege in the northern Gaza and the fifth day of siege at Al-Awda Hospital. They totally sieged Al-Awda Hospital with the tanks, so we can’t move outside the hospital. And from the beginning of this siege, they are bombing our two inpatient departments and bombing our water tanks. So now we have more than 70% of the hospital without water, because the tanks are destroyed, totally destroyed, the water tank. And also, this afternoon, they are bombing our central store related to medical supplies.
After today, we will not have the fuel to running the hospital, and we have a lot of patients inside the hospital. We have 43 of patients here. And we can’t deal with this, because every day we are doing to them operations and the treatment in the [inaudible] inside our [inaudible], and we need medication, medical supplies and fuel, and also food. We don’t have food, and we don’t have healthy water and filtered water.
Our message to the freedom people in the world, really, to stop the genocide in Gaza Strip and especially in the northern Gaza. You can’t imagine how the situation here. The people are dying in the streets. They are injured in the street, and nobody can move to bring them.
Now we hear the massacre of more than 150 [inaudible] in Jabaliya camp, but nobody can go there to save these people. Really, we need also, from WHO, U.N. agencies and our partners really to urgent appeal and urgent to come to Al-Awda Hospital to bring our needs, from medication and medical supplies, and especially from fuel, food and healthy water for patients here.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Mohammed Salha, acting director of Al-Awda Hospital, speaking late Thursday night to Democracy Now! We attempted to reach him live right now, but we could not get any kind of connection.
When we come back, we’ll be joined by Palestinian poet and author Mosab Abu Toha. He’s just published his new book of poetry, Forest of Noise.
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AMY GOODMAN: “If I Should Fall” from the 1974 album Palestine Lives! released by Paredon Records. Musician and label co-founder Barbara Dane passed away this week at the age of 97.
