Graphic video shows ‘impossible to describe’ hospital in Gaza
Heavy shelling in Gaza is forcing more than 15,000 people to seek shelter in a nearby hospital. Conditions inside are terrible.
Public health officials say hospitals in Gaza City are in danger due to a fuel shortage that has left them inoperable as escalating fighting between Israeli ground troops and militants approaches the facilities.
President Joe Biden told reporters on Monday that hospitals “must be protected” and expressed a desire for “less intrusive measures” from the Israeli military in the fight against Hamas.
Israeli ground forces are closing in on Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza, while more than 3,500 staff, patients and civilians remain in emergency shelters at the hospital.
“The tanks are in front of the hospital. We are under complete blockade,” said Dr. Ahmed El Mokhallalati, a surgeon at the hospital, told Portal by phone. “It’s a completely civilian area.” Just…hospital patients, doctors and other civilians staying in the hospital. Someone should stop this.
Mohammed Zaqout, the director of Gaza’s hospitals, said on Monday that 32 injured people had died in hospital since the weekend, including seven patients in intensive care. He also said there are 36 vulnerable newborns in the hospital who need to be evacuated. Gaza’s health ministry said three babies had died since Sunday because of a lack of milk and electricity for incubators.
World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said late Sunday that the situation in Al Shifa was “dire and dangerous” and called for an immediate ceasefire. “It has been three days without electricity, without water and with very poor internet, which has severely affected our ability to provide basic services,” he said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Al-Quds Hospital, the second largest hospital in Gaza City, lost power on Sunday surrounded by Israeli tanks and ground troopsaccording to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, an independent aid organization.
Israeli military officials say both hospitals and other hospitals house operational posts and Hamas militants, either within the facilities or in tunnels below. Hamas officials disputed the claims, saying the Israeli military was using them to justify airstrikes and advancing ground forces.
Developments:
“Aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip will not be unloaded starting Tuesday because there is no fuel for the forklifts or delivery vehicles,” said Andrea De Domenico, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian territories.
∎ As tens of thousands of Palestinians move south every day, they find their shelters overcrowded and a lack of fuel has crippled water treatment systems, leaving taps running dry and sewage spilling onto the streets, creating conditions favorable for the spread of disease .
∎ On Monday, all 27 European Union countries issued a joint statement condemning Hamas for using hospitals and civilians as “human shields” and calling on Israel to “use maximum restraint and targeting to avoid human casualties.”
∎ UN offices around the world lowered their flags to half-staff to mourn workers killed since war broke out following Hamas’ deadly incursion into southern Israel last month.
∎ According to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. Israeli officials recently increased the number of people killed in the Hamas attack from 1,400 to about 1,200 and took about 240 hostages. According to the Israeli military, 44 soldiers have been killed since ground operations began.
Thomas White, the director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said Monday “The humanitarian operation in Gaza will come to a standstill in the next 48 hours as no fuel will be allowed to enter Gaza.”
Earlier in the day, two of the agency’s water distribution companies stopped working because they ran out of fuel, leaving 200,000 people virtually without drinking water, White said. A large fuel reservoir accessed by the UN in coordination with the Israeli government is “now empty,” White said.
While dozens of trucks carrying humanitarian aid have entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing in recent weeks, Israel has not allowed fuel to enter the area, saying Hamas would likely appropriate it for its own use.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society tweeted that it had to turn around His evacuation convoy set out on Monday to pick up injured patients at Al-Quds Hospital due to “relentless bombardment” and the “dangerous situation at the hospital’s location.” A spokesman for the group said: “Our staff are trapped with patients and the wounded, without electricity, water or food.”
The Israeli military said Monday that troops killed militants near the hospital and accused them of trying to blend in with the civilian population. The Israeli military posted a video on X It purports to show a militant holding a rocket near the hospital entrance.
According to the WHO, more than half of the hospitals across the Gaza Strip are no longer functioning.
Gaza officials say 3,250 people – more than half of them children – are reported missing in the enclave, many of them trapped under the rubble of buildings that collapsed due to Israeli bombardment.
Those trying to save survivors are racing against time, often without sufficient resources, rescuers say. Adding to the difficulties posed by a war zone, rescuers lack heavy machinery such as bulldozers that could clear debris and help find people still alive.
“Our colleagues are literally trying to rescue people from the rubble with their hands,” Tommaso Della Longa, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told the Associated Press.
The daily humanitarian pauses that Israel has agreed to to allow residents of the northern Gaza Strip to relocate to the relatively safer south and to facilitate the distribution of aid provide opportunities for rescue efforts to continue. But that takes time.
“The problem we have,” Della Longa said, “is that the people of Gaza don’t have time.”
On Sunday, Israeli military officials said troops had personally delivered 300 liters of fuel to Al-Shifa Hospital “for urgent medical purposes” and that “Hamas has forbidden the hospital from taking it.”
Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra told Al Jazeera that the Israeli military delivered 200, not 300 liters of fuel. “These 200 liters are enough to run the generator for less than an hour,” he said. “This is a mockery of patients and children.”
The Israeli military also said it had provided an escape route for civilians to leave the hospital, which is said to be home to a key Hamas operations post.
Dr. Marwan Abusada, head of surgery at the hospital, told Al Jazeera: “Nobody can get out. Nobody can come in… People who tried to evacuate the hospital were shot at in the street.”
The Israeli military Announced Monday the reopening of evacuation corridors for civilians to escape the northern Gaza Strip and a “tactical pause in military operations” in Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. local time.
According to the Israeli military, evacuation routes will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The United Nations estimates that over 100,000 civilians have fled the northern Gaza Strip via evacuation routes.
Last week, Israel announced its commitment to daily four-hour breaks in areas across the Gaza Strip to expand the flow of humanitarian aid. The pauses have been repeatedly called for by US officials, including Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Israeli officials said they would not consider a ceasefire until all hostages were released.
UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees, said one of its guesthouses in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip was significantly damaged by “naval attacks by Israeli forces” on Monday.
No deaths were reported and the agency said U.N. staff left the building “90 minutes before the strike.”
“This latest attack is another indication that nowhere in Gaza is safe. Not in the north, not in the central areas and not in the south,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement.
Nearly 780,000 displaced civilians have sought refuge in U.N. buildings and facilities, including schools, since the war began last month. More than 66 civilians have been killed and several hundred injured in more than 60 UNRWA facilities since the war began last month. Since October 7, over 100 UNRWA staff have been killed, making the conflict the deadliest ever for UN staff.
Contributors: Maureen Groppe, John Bacon and Thao Nguyen, USA TODAY; The Associated Press