More than 30 dead in Gaza’s largest hospital due to lack of electricity and Israeli tanks at the center’s doors
The Israeli army and tanks arrived this Monday at the doors of the main hospital in the Gaza Strip, Al Shifa, in Gaza City (north of the enclave), in the basement of which, according to the Israeli Defense Forces, the Hamas command center is located. The health complex, the most important in the region, has collapsed: there has been no electricity since Sunday, meaning it cannot receive or treat patients who were already there. According to Ashraf Al Qidra, spokesman for the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, at least 32 people – three of them premature babies – have died in the last three days due to a lack of electricity.
According to Portal, about 650 patients remain at the Al-Shifa facility, desperately waiting to be evacuated to another medical center by the Red Cross or another NGO such as the Palestinian Red Crescent. In addition, thousands of people – around 20,000 – are seeking refuge in their facilities from Israeli bombings, which have also hit medical centers.
“The tanks are in front of the hospital. We are in total lockdown. It is a completely civilian area. In the hospital there are only hospital facilities, patients, doctors and other civilians. “Someone should stop this,” Ahmed El Mokhallalati, a surgeon at the hospital, told Portal by telephone. “The tanks were bombed [de agua]They bombed the water wells, they also bombed the oxygen pump. They bombed everything in the hospital. So we barely survived. We tell everyone that the hospital is no longer a safe place to treat patients. “We are harming patients by keeping them here,” he added.
The head of pediatrics at the hospital, Dr. Mohamed Tabasha, confirmed to Portal the deaths of the three babies at Al Shifa facilities: “Yesterday I had 39 babies and today there are 36. I can’t say what they can withstand.” I could lose two more babies today or in an hour. “I never in my life thought I would be putting 29 babies together side by side, each with a different disease.”
Israel, meanwhile, continues to insist that there are tunnels in hospital basements where Hamas has its command centers and that it uses patients as human shields. The Al-Quds Center, the second-largest hospital, also stopped operations on Sunday after running out of supplies and running out of medicine or food to care for patients. The Israeli Defense Forces published this Monday several messages on both X and Telegram In it, they claim that a “terrorist unit” tried to enter the area of Al-Quds Hospital and fired at its soldiers from the entrance before they killed the militants. “During the exchange of fire, civilians were seen leaving the hospital building, and other terrorists who came out of adjacent buildings hid among them and joined the attempted attack,” said the text from Israeli troops, which included a video of one the attacks include suspected terrorists. “During the incident, around 21 terrorists were killed and our forces suffered no casualties,” he added.