An injured person is assisted at Shifa Hospital after an Israeli air attack hit the nearby al-Ahli Hospital, October 17. (Photo by Reuters)
China and Russia have issued condemnations of a bombing that targeted a crowded hospital in the small blockaded Palestinian territory of Gaza, with Moscow challenging the Israeli regime to provide facts to prove its claims it was not involved in the attack.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that the attack on al-Ahli Arabi hospital in Gaza a day earlier was shocking and "an act of dehumanization."
Zakharova said, however, that Israel should prove its claims that it was not behind the attack that killed at least 500 people, mostly women and children, by providing unedited satellite images. She said the US could also provide such imagery.
"Regarding our assessment, we certainly qualify such an act as a crime, as an act of dehumanization," Zakharova said Wednesday on her Radio Sputnik program.
"We are now seeing a desire [from Israel] to absolve responsibility," she continued. "If there are serious intentions ... to prove it was not involved and is innocent, then it needs not only to comment in the media and on social networks, but to provide facts," she added.
The Israeli regime has denied responsibility for the hospital attack by saying that the huge explosion that destroyed the facility late on Tuesday was caused by a malfunctioning rocket launched by the Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad.
The Palestinians and almost all governments in the region have squarely blamed the Israeli regime for the attack.
Meanwhile, China said on Wednesday that it was "shocked by and strongly condemns" the attack on Gaza hospital.
"China calls for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the war," said the Chinese foreign ministry in a statement.
Russian authorities had previously criticized Israel and its main ally, the US, for fueling a decades-long crisis in Palestine that led to the bloody confrontations in the occupied territories and in Gaza this month.
Moscow has warned that Washingtons decision to move warships to waters close to the Israeli-occupied territories would escalate the war.
Nearly 3,500 people have been killed in more than 10 days of Israeli airstrikes and shelling against Gaza, a small territory with a population of 2.3 million people on the Mediterranean Sea which is under a constant Israeli blockade.
The Israeli attacks on Gaza began on October 7 after the Gaza-based Hamas resistance movement launched waves of attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories, killing 1,400 settlers and military forces.
LINK: https://www.ansarpress.com/english/27855
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