Hamas on Saturday (December 16, 2023) said that it would not negotiate a hostage exchange until Israel ended its military operation in the Gaza Strip.
“The Hamas movement reiterates its position not to conduct any negotiations on the exchange of prisoners until the military operation against our people finally ends,” the Palestine group said in a statement as quoted by UNI news agency.
On October 7, Palestinian movement Hamas launched a large-scale rocket attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip across the border, killing over 1,200 people and abducting some 240 others.
Israel launched retaliatory strikes, ordered a complete blockade of Gaza, and launched a ground incursion into the Palestinian enclave with the declared goal of eliminating Hamas fighters and rescuing the hostages.
Over 18,700 people have been killed so far in Gaza as a result of the conflict, according to local authorities.
Meanwhile, UN workers delivering medical supplies to the Al-Shifa Hospital in north Gaza on 16 December have described the emergency department as a “bloodbath”, with hundreds of injured people inside, and a constant flow of new patients.
According to the team, Patients with trauma injuries were being sutured on the floor, limited to no pain management is available at the hospital, and the emergency department is so full that workers must take care not to step on patients on the floor.
Al-Shifa Hospital, formerly the most important and largest referral hospital in Gaza, is now barely functioning: the operating theatres and other major services are not working due to lack of fuel, oxygen, specialized medical staff, and supplies. The hospital is only able to provide basic trauma stabilization, and has no blood for transfusion.
A handful of doctors and nurses, and some 70 volunteers, are working under what WHO staff described as “unbelievably challenging circumstances” in a hospital “in need of resuscitation.”
