Director of Al-Shifa Hospital to CNN: “All essential units have collapsed”
Smoke rises above Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on November 8. Doaa Rouqa/Portal
Conditions at al-Shifa hospital were “catastrophic” with essential units collapsing, hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya told CNN.
There are currently about 7,000 people in the hospital and about 1,500 are patients and medical staff, Abu Salmiya said.
The director also clarified that the hospital had asked the Israeli army for 600 liters of fuel per hour to run the generators, but the army had not yet responded.
On Sunday, the Israeli army said it had deposited 300 liters of fuel at the entrance to the Shifa hospital complex, but Hamas had prevented the hospital from accepting the fuel. Abu Salmiya told Al Araby TV that staff were too scared to look for him.
“We told the Israeli army that the 300 liters of fuel they offered is not enough to run the hospital for 30 minutes,” he told CNN.
“There is no more water, food or milk for children and babies… the situation in the hospital is catastrophic,” Abu Salmiya said.
Al-Shifa Hospital is dependent on Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which is controlled by Hamas. Israel claims that Hamas houses its headquarters under the hospital building. Doctors at the hospital and Hamas have rejected this claim.
CNN also spoke to an Al-Arabiya reporter, Khader al Zaanoun, who is hospitalized.
“Communication is very poor and it is almost impossible for us to inform what is happening in the hospital and its courtyards. We hardly have any cell phone connections, but no internet,” he said.
“No one can move or dare to leave the hospital. The staff here are aware of the many strikes around the hospital, we see smoke from these strikes and we know that there are people in some of these buildings. But the ambulances are not leaving the hospital because… in the last few days an ambulance was run over while leaving the hospital.”
The Israeli Defense Forces announced in recent days that there was heavy fighting in the area around Al-Shifa Hospital. The IDF said on Sunday that there was a corridor east of the hospital that could be used by pedestrians and ambulances. It is not clear how many of the thousands of displaced people on the hospital grounds were able to use this corridor to leave the hospital.
Al Zaanoun said people in the hospital “are starving, there is no food or drinking water, we barely have tap water for an hour a day.”