GAZA CITY, Palestine

The Israeli army has arrested more than 2,600 Palestinians, including 40 medical staffers and eight journalists, in Gaza since Oct. 7, the government media office in the blockaded enclave said on Saturday.

“We have received testimonies that the occupation army has committed field executions of more than 137 Palestinian civilians in the Gaza and northern governorates,” Ismail al-Thawabteh, director of the media office, said in a news conference held at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza Strip.

He said that the Israeli army "set up detention camps east of Gaza City, dug large pits in them and placed dozens of our Palestinian citizens inside before executing them by shooting them directly, and then buried them with bulldozers."

Al-Thawabteh said that “the occupation executed pregnant women on their way to Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza. They were raising white flags, but the occupation (forces) shot them from a close distance and then buried them on the spot.”

He said that the Israeli army “committed 1,720 massacres during the war, resulting in 27,258 martyrs and missing, including 20,258 martyrs who reached hospitals, including 8,200 children, 6,200 women, 310 medical staffers, 35 from civil defense, and 100 journalists.”

He said: “7,000 are still missing, either under the rubble or their fate is still unknown, and 70% of them are children and women.”

Al-Thawabteh said that the Israeli army has also destroyed 126 government buildings, adding that 92 schools and universities completely went out of service, and 285 schools and universities were partially damaged.

The Israeli army, he said, also completely destroyed 115 mosques, while 200 mosques are partially damaged, in addition to three churches.

About damage to residential units, Al-Thawabteh said the Israeli forces have completely destroyed 55,000 housing units and partially damaged 258,000 housing units.

As for hospitals, he said, more than 23 hospitals and 53 health centers are out of service due to the attacks. The Israeli army, he added, targeted 140 health facilities, affecting the provision of health services, in addition to bombing 102 ambulances.

He called on Arab and Islamic countries to introduce medically equipped field hospitals to save tens of thousands of wounded and sick people and to transfer thousands of seriously injured to hospitals abroad.

The media office director also called for efforts to renovate and rehabilitate dozens of hospitals and medical centers.

Since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip, killing at least 20,258 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 53,688 others, according to health authorities in the enclave.

The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins with half of the coastal territory's housing stock damaged or destroyed, and nearly 2 million people displaced within the densely-populated enclave amid shortages of food and clean water.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala in Istanbul