Global protests erupt after Israeli strike kills hundreds at Gaza hospital

Protests have erupted in several countries hours after an air strike hit a Gaza City hospital, killing at least 500 people, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

For tens of thousands of families in Gaza, hospitals became a refuge from seemingly endless Israeli shelling. Then came the strike Tuesday night on Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza, which the health ministry said killed at least 500 people.

Residents who have been told to flee the north of the Palestinian territory had packed the courtyards and corridors of the territory’s overwhelmed hospitals in the belief they were a safe haven from the Israeli bombardments.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the British and French embassies in Tehran in the early hours of Wednesday as regional anger grows over a deadly strike on a Gaza hospital.

Several hundred people protested in Tripoli and other Libyan cities late Tuesday over the deadly strike on a Gaza hospital, according to AFP.

In Tripoli, hundreds of demonstrators of all ages, brandishing Palestinian flags and some covering their faces with Palestinian keffiyehs, crisscrossed the streets of the city centre before converging on Martyrs’ Square.

Television footage also showed protests in Yemen’s southwestern city of Taz, as well as in the Moroccan capital Rabat and Iraq’s capital, Baghdad.

Pakistan has strongly condemned the Israeli attack on a hospital in Gaza resulting in hundreds of casualties.

In a statement, Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said attacking a hospital, where civilians were seeking shelter and emergency treatment, is inhumane and indefensible.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the blast at the hospital in Gaza was “the latest example of Israeli attacks devoid of the most basic human values”, while large crowds of protesters gathered outside the Israeli embassy in Ankara and the consulate in Istanbul.

Early on Wednesday, the US state department raised its travel alert for Lebanon to “do not travel,” while authorizing the voluntary, temporary departure of family members of US government personnel.

UN chief ‘horrified’ by Gaza air strike

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “horrified” by the deadly strike on a hospital in Gaza that left at least 200 people dead, he said in a social media post Tuesday.

“My heart is with the families of the victims. Hospitals and medical personnel are protected under international humanitarian law,” Guterres said in the message on X, formerly Twitter.