Only in Gaza: A hospital becomes a graveyard
It says 40 patients have died in recent days, including three premature babies whose incubators were shut down when power went out.
Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip had put 25 of the besieged territory’s 35 hospitals out of use.
GAZA ( Web News )
The health system is unable to provide adequate services to the wounded and patients amid the tragic killing of 40 Patients at al-Shifa Hospital.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that the health crisis in the Gaza Strip has reached ‘catastrophic proportions’, stressing that medical teams are facing depletion and exhaustion with the Israeli aggression and total blockade tightening for 39 consecutive days,
The ministry’s spokesperson, Ashraf al-Qidra, announced that the health system is unable to provide adequate services to the wounded and patients, revealing the tragic killing of 40 Patients at al-Shifa Hospital.
Concerns are particularly heightened for premature babies who have been relocated to intensive care following coordination between the ministry and the Red Cross, he added.
Al-Qidra underscored that al-Shifa Hospital, housing around 10,000 people, including displaced families without adequate protection, faces severe challenges. Israeli snipers continue to target anyone attempting to evacuate the area.
A Hamas official said on Tuesday that Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip had put 25 of the besieged territory’s 35 hospitals out of use.
“It has also destroyed 94 government buildings and 253 schools,” Osama Hamdan, a Beirut-based Hamas official, told a news conference in the Lebanese capital.
Palestinians trapped inside Gaza’s biggest hospital were digging a mass grave on Tuesday to bury patients who died under Israeli encirclement, and said no plan was in place to evacuate babies despite Israel announcing an offer to send portable incubators.
Israeli forces have surrounded Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which they say sits atop an underground headquarters of Hamas militants.
Hamas, Gaza’s ruling group, denies fighters are present and says 650 patients and 5,000-7,000 other displaced civilians are trapped inside the hospital grounds, under constant fire from snipers and drones. It says 40 patients have died in recent days, including three premature babies whose incubators were shut down when power went out.
Israeli forces said on Wednesday that they were carrying out an operation in Gaza’s largest hospital, targeting a suspected Hamas command center located below thousands of ailing and sheltering civilians.
After warnings from the United States and others that the Al-Shifa hospital must be protected, the Israeli forces said in the early hours that they had entered the compound in Gaza City.
“Based on intelligence information and an operational necessity, IDF forces are carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital,” the military said in a statement.
Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday it “holds the occupation (Israel) and President Biden fully responsible for (the) occupation army’s raid of Al Shifa medical complex”.
Hamas said a US intelligence statement on Tuesday that the US supported Israel’s conclusion that the militants had operations at Al Shifa “was a green light” for the raid.
“The White House and the Pentagon’s adoption of the false (Israeli) narrative, claiming that the resistance is using Al Shifa medical complex for military purposes, was a green light for the occupation to commit more massacres against civilians,” Hamas said. There was no immediate US comment on the raid.
United d Nations estimates that at least 2,300 patients, staff and displaced civilians are inside the facility, trapped by days of fierce fighting and aerial bombardments.
Witnesses have described conditions inside as horrific, with medical procedures taking place without anaesthetic, families with scant food or water living in corridors, and the stench of decomposing corpses filling the air.
“There are bodies littered in the hospital complex and there is no longer electricity at the morgues,” said hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya.
“We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” he added, estimating that 179 bodies had been interred so far, including seven newborns who died when their incubators lost power.
Before the assault, US President Joe Biden urged Israel to take “less intrusive action relative to the hospital.”
“The hospital must be protected,” he said.
But Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas’s military use of the facility “jeopardizes its protected status under international law”, a claim that many international human rights lawyers refute.
Attempting to minimise any backlash against the operation, the Israeli army said it had given authorities in Hamas-run Gaza 12 hours’ notice that military operations inside must cease.
“Unfortunately, it did not,” an Israeli forces statement read, again calling on “all Hamas terrorists present in the hospital to surrender.”
Israel’s military also stressed that its ground teams included medics and Arabic speakers “who have undergone specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment.”
The “intent” was that “no harm is caused to the civilians being used by Hamas as human shields,” the Israeli military added.
Hamas denies deliberately locating paramilitary assets and personnel at hospitals, schools and other civilian buildings.
The White House on Tuesday said that US intelligence sources had corroborated Israel’s claim that Hamas has buried an operational center under the hospital.
Hamas and another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, “operate a command and control node from Al-Shifa in Gaza City,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
“They have stored weapons there and they’re prepared to respond to an Israeli military operation against that facility.”
Hamas on Tuesday denounced Israeli army claims that a discarded baby bottle, makeshift toilet, and bullet-scarred motorbike were evidence the militants held hostages inside a Gaza hospital.
On Monday evening, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said troops “found signs that indicate that Hamas held hostages” in the basement of Al-Rantisi children’s hospital in Gaza City.
AFP was not able to independently confirm the allegation, and the Hamas health ministry said the objects merely showed the basement was used by displaced residents fleeing fighting.
In a statement, the ministry said the video was “poor staging” with “not a single piece of evidence” backing the Israeli army claims.
“This basement appeared in the original blueprints of the hospital as a storage area and displaced people found refuge there,” it added.
Some 240 people were taken hostage by Hamas fighters who surged through the heavily militarized Gaza border on October 7 and killed 1,200 people — mostly civilians — according to Israel.