Death and despair in the Gaza hospital as the battle reaches its doors
Fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East grew as the United States carried out a new round of airstrikes in eastern Syria against facilities it said were linked to Iran and its allies, and as Israeli forces skirmished with Hezbollah fighters the border with Lebanon.
But the world’s attention has largely been focused on the fighting in Gaza and the spiraling humanitarian crisis there.
President Biden said at the White House on Monday that his administration had consulted with the Israeli government on the hospital issue. “The position of the United States on this issue is clear,” he said. “Hospitals must be protected.”
The Israeli military did not answer specific questions about its actions around Al-Shifa Hospital. In a statement on Monday, it said it was “engaged in an intense battle against Hamas” and that “this currently includes the area around Shifa Hospital, but not the hospital itself.”
In another explanation Regarding the fighting at Al-Quds, the Israeli army said that a “terrorist squad” deployed among civilians at the entrance to the hospital fired rocket-propelled grenades at Israeli soldiers, damaging an Israeli tank. Israeli forces returned fire, the statement said, killing “approximately 21 terrorists.” That account of the fighting could not immediately be verified.
The according to the Red Crescent it “strongly condemns the occupying forces’ false claims that armed individuals launch projectiles from Al-Quds Hospital.”
Overall, health officials in Gaza, who are part of the Hamas government, say more than 11,000 people have been killed in the Palestinian enclave since the start of the war, following the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel in which an estimated 1,200 people died.
Al-Shifa and other medical centers in Gaza City have been struggling to maintain their operations for weeks as Israeli forces close in and supplies of fuel and medicine dwindle. The head of the WHO warned on Sunday that Al-Shifa was “no longer functioning as a hospital” and was struggling to provide care after three days “without electricity, without water and with very poor internet.”
“The situation here is catastrophic in every sense of the word,” said Jihan Miqdad, head nurse at the emergency room of Al-Shifa, where medical teams survive on cookies and dates. Patients on ventilators in intensive care died because the hospital had so little oxygen, she said.
To care for the premature babies in Al-Shifa, medical staff lay sheets of reflective foil and blankets over hospital beds and place the babies close together to mimic as much as possible the warmth of an incubator, Mr Abbas said. the official of the Gaza Ministry of Health. Four of the premature babies there were born by emergency caesarean section after their mothers were killed in strikes, he said.