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CAIRO: The Gaza health ministry said two Gaza City hospitals have been taken out of service due to Israel’s escalation of its ground offensive and damage caused by continued Israeli bombing, as tanks advanced deeper into the territory.
The ministry said in its statement that Al-Rantissi Children’s Hospital was badly damaged a few days ago by an Israeli bombardment. At the same time, it reported Israeli attacks in the vicinity of the nearby Eye Hospital, which forced the suspension of services there, too.
“The occupation deliberately and systematically targets the health care system in the Gaza governorate as part of its genocidal policy against the Strip,” it said.
“None of the facilities or hospitals have safe access routes that allow patients and the wounded to reach them,” the ministry added.
There was no immediate Israeli comment.
Nearly two years into the war, Israel describes Gaza City as the last bastion of Hamas. The Israeli military has been demolishing housing blocks it says were being used by the militant group since Israel launched its ground assault on the city this month.
On Monday, residents said Israeli tanks had advanced deeper into the Sheikh Radwan area and Jala Street in northern Gaza City, where the two hospitals are located, while in Tel Al-Hawa in the southeast tanks have pushed deeper in the direction of the western parts of the city.
They said Israeli forces had used explosive-laden vehicles, detonated remotely, to blow up dozens of houses in the two areas.
In a meeting on Monday at the military headquarters in Tel Aviv with Defense Minister Israel Katz and Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed his determination to eliminate Hamas, secure the release of the remaining hostages and ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel, his office said.
The offensive has alarmed the families of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. Twenty of those 48 captives are thought to still be alive.
Meanwhile, local health authorities said at least 25 people had been killed by Israeli fire on Monday across the enclave, most of them in Gaza City.
Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel killed 1,200 people, and 251 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s two-year-long campaign has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Gazan health authorities, and has spread famine, demolished most buildings, and displaced most of the territory’s population, in many cases multiple times. 

THE UNITED NATIONS, United States: After the bloody civil war in Sudan’s Darfur region 20 years ago, the world said “never again.”
And yet it is happening again, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told AFP in a sobering interview.
Since April 2023, a war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has left tens of thousands of people dead and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
The violence, with its “ethnic connotations,” is reminiscent of what happened 20 years ago in Darfur, Grandi says. Women have been raped, children forcibly recruited, and there is gruesome violence against people who resist.
In 2003, dictator Omar Al-Bashir unleashed the Janjaweed militias on non-Arab communities in Darfur. An estimated 300,000 people were killed and close to 2.5 million people were displaced.
The International Criminal Court is investigating allegations that Al-Bashir, who is still at large, committed genocide and crimes against humanity, among other charges, in Darfur between 2003 and 2008.
RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is the most notorious member of the Janjaweed. The new conflict has already left tens of thousands dead.
“It is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world,” with an “appalling” 12 million people displaced and one-third of those forced to seek refuge in “fragile” neighboring countries, Grandi says.
Has the world forgotten about Sudan’s current crisis?
“Let’s be frank, I’m not sure the world is forgetting because it has never paid much attention to it,” Grandi says. He is not optimistic that will change at the annual UN General Assembly in New York this week.
The situation in North Darfur’s El-Fasher, the last major city in the region still under army control, is “catastrophic,” Grandi said, with hundreds of thousands of people trapped amid an 18-month siege by RSF.
“Not only they’re inside, hungry and desperate, but they’re not even allowed to leave the city to seek help somewhere else, so they flee at night, at great risk. I’m sure that many do not make it,” Grandi said.

- Crisis fatigue? -

“Compared to 20 years ago... the international attention is much less. Is it fatigue? Is it competition of other crises? Is it a sense that these crises never get solved? Difficult to tell, but people are suffering in the same way,” he said.
Non-profits and UN agencies have fewer and fewer resources to address the problem, due to steep cuts in foreign aid from the United States and Europe.
“My message to European donors, European countries in particular, is that it is a huge strategic mistake,” Grandi said.
Slashing humanitarian aid to people “in this belt around Europe that is so full of crisis, is a recipe for seeing more people moving on toward Europe,” he said.
On another continent, another raging conflict is not receiving much international attention: the deadly civil war in Myanmar between rebel groups and the army, which has been in power since a 2021 coup.
Grandi, who just returned from Myanmar, called it “a very harsh, brutal conflict” that targets civilian communities and has uprooted about three million people — “probably more, in my opinion.”
The plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority, of whom more than a million are living as refugees in neighboring Bangladesh, will be discussed at a high-level UN meeting in New York on September 30.
“It’s true that there is little political attention for these very complicated conflicts in a world where no conflict seems to find a solution, even the big ones like Ukraine, like Gaza,” he said.
But, he added, “we have to be careful not to generalize too much” about indifference.
“There are also a lot of people that do care, that do care when you tell them the story. When you explain about suffering.
“It’s constant work that we have to do in that respect.”