Anti-Israel protests flared across the Middle East and North Africa on Tuesday as the leaders of Arab countries condemned Israel over a deadly blast believed to have killed hundreds of people sheltering at a hospital in Gaza City. <\/p>\n
Palestinian officials quickly blamed Israel for the explosion at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital but the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) rejected the allegation, accusing Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants of conducting a \u201cfailed rocket launch\u201d and saying the lack of structural damage at the facility rules out the possibility of an airstrike. <\/p>\n
Islamic Jihad described Israeli accusations as \u201cfalse and baseless\u201d and claimed that it does not use public facilities such as hospitals for military purposes, according to a written statement published Wednesday. <\/p>\n
Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq issued statements condemning Israel and accusing its military of bombing the hospital. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, thousands of protesters shouting anti-Israel slogans gathered in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, and Tunisia. Protests also rocked the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. <\/p>\n
The blast at the hospital fueled fury across the region over the bloodshed in Gaza, a coastal enclave home to 2.2 million people that has been under siege by Israel for more than a week in retaliation for a large-scale terror attack carried out by Hamas in Israel on October 7. <\/p>\n
In Iran, rallies also took place outside the French and British embassies in Tehran, the country\u2019s capital. Demonstrators chanted \u201cdeath to France, England, America, and the Zionists,\u201d according to a video published by Iran state-run RNA news on Wednesday morning. Rallies also took place in other cities, including Esfahan and Qom. <\/p>\n
Hundreds of people rallied in several areas in Tunis, Tunisia, state-run TAP news agency reported. TAP said \u201cmass protests were held on Tuesday night,\u201d in several areas \u201cin solidarity with the Palestinian people\u201d and against Israeli bombardment of Gaza. <\/p>\n
In Istanbul, Turkish security forces used water cannon and pepper spray to disperse protesters who managed to force their way into a compound where the Israeli consulate is located. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on \u201call humanity to take action to stop this unprecedented brutality in Gaza,\u201d in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding that the attack on the hospital was \u201cthe latest example of Israel\u2019s attacks devoid of the most basic human values.\u201d <\/p>\n
The blast resulted in Jordan canceling a planned Wednesday summit between US President Joe Biden and the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, a government body with limited self-rule in the West Bank. <\/p>\n
Jordan\u2019s Foreign Affairs Minister, Ayman Safadi, posted on X, \u201cHow many innocent Palestinians must die before Israel stops its war on Gaza?\u201d <\/p>\n
Safadi called for peace and said international law \u201ccan\u2019t be selective,\u201d and that the \u201cWorld must speak clearly, act promptly against this war.\u201d <\/p>\n
While the IDF has said it does not target hospitals, the UN and Doctors Without Borders say Israeli airstrikes have struck medical facilities, including hospitals and ambulances. <\/p>\n
Hospitals were already struggling to tend to the wounded across the territory, operating with shortages of electricity and water. <\/p>\n
The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem which oversees and funds the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital condemned the explosion, according to a statement from the church released on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
\u201cGaza remains bereft of safe havens,\u201d the diocese said, calling the blast a crime against humanity. <\/p>\n
\u201cHospitals, by the tenets of international humanitarian law, are sanctuaries, yet this assault has transgressed those sacred boundaries,\u201d the statement reads. <\/p>\n
Early Wednesday, the IDF presented imagery which it asserts shows that the destruction of the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital could not have been the result of an airstrike. <\/p>\n\n
Anti-Israel protests flared across the Middle East and North Africa on Tuesday as the leaders of Arab countries condemned Israel over a deadly blast believed to have killed hundreds of people sheltering at a hospital in Gaza City. Palestinian officials quickly blamed Israel for the explosion at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital but the Israel Defense <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}