A senior official of the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas has condemned Israel claiming that more than 40 percent of those killed by Israeli military are civilians from the southern Gaza Strip.
Osama Hamdan said in a news briefing on Saturday in Beirut that Israel "does not differentiate between north and south in its bombing" even though it told civilians to go south to evacuate.
Israeli forces have been conducting operations at the enclave's largest hospital for 4 days. They claim to be searching for Hamas's command and control center under the Al-Shifa medical compound.
Hamdan told reporters that no Hamas command center nor hostage has been found and that they have committed a grave crime, driving the sick, the injured and medical workers out of the facility.
He added that Israeli forces committed various violations of international law such as bombing hospitals and that the US government under President Joe Biden is also responsible as it supports Israel.
The official described the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, citing that only one tenth of the amount of food needed has been brought in. He added that Israel is forcing civilians strategically out of northern Gaza with mass killings, hunger and raids on hospitals.
Hamdan pledged that the Palestinian people will not yield to any Israeli offensive and will fight to the end.
Meanwhile Palestinian health authority announced on Saturday that at least 11,800 people have been killed in Gaza, of whom about 4,900 are children.
They say that the numbers reflect data that could be collected on Friday, but updating casualty numbers is hard as communicating with hospitals in the northern area is difficult.
The death toll on the Israeli side is about 1,200.