Many health facilities have become the fulcrum of the war that Israel has been waging against Gaza for more than a month with the aim of “eliminating Hamas and freeing the hostages” held by militants of the Palestinian movement.
Al-Quds Hospital, the second largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, which includes the operations center of the Palestinian Red Crescent in the Strip, was not far from that, according to Palestinian Red Crescent spokesman Nibal Farsakh, who indicated in a statement to the “Al-Hurra” website according to which “all roads lead to… The hospital is completely closed”.
He explained: “No one can leave or enter the hospital, and today marks a week since the siege, and is the fifth day of communications blackout for our staff working in Al-Quds hospital, which also contains the emergency rescue and the Gaza Ambulance Centre, where our colleagues work.”
He added: “The interruption of communications with them is due to Israeli bombing, which led to the destruction of communication lines and the Internet. Therefore, we cannot communicate with them except through radios, which are subject to constant interference” .
He continued: “Our colleagues can barely send us a few messages to inform us of the situation and developments within the hospital through the wireless device.”
On Wednesday, Farsakh indicated that he finally received a message at 6.45pm from his colleagues, “informing us that thousands of displaced people could leave the hospital now due to the severity of the situation and the poor humanitarian conditions”.
He said: “Displaced people who had taken refuge in the hospital to avoid Israeli shelling set off on foot for long distances.”
He added: “Those who remain inside the hospital are patients, their companions and medical staff, 300 in total,” stressing that “their conditions are very difficult, as they are besieged without water, food or electricity.”
Evacuation of hospitals
The correspondent of the Al-Hurra channel in the Gaza Strip, Saif Al-Suwaiti, said that in addition to the siege of the Al-Quds hospital, the hospitals for children, eyes and psychiatric diseases Al-Rantisi and Al-Nasr, which are located in Gaza, the neighborhood of Al-Nasr, in the north of the Gaza Strip, is under siege, as is the Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in the sector.
A video, posted on social media, showed evacuees of Al-Nasr Hospital trying to leave the hospital, raising white flags after Israeli forces asked residents to go south, but they were startled by the sound of bullets, which made them flee. quickly to return to the hospital again.
But Al-Suwaiti said: “This video was made three days ago, but currently the hospital has been completely evacuated of all medical staff and displaced people. Currently only patients remain there, most of whom are children, as well as their companions, and no one currently knows any information about them.”
A Doctors Without Borders nurse, Fadi Abu Rayala, said in a video posted on social media: “We left the injured children on the beds of Al-Nasr hospital and we could not take any patients with us and we had to go out under the tanks, the Israeli army and the bullets around us.” She added: “The artillery shells were targeting the hospital from inside.”
He added: “Praise God that we managed to save ourselves, but those who are currently infected in Gaza are dying and the bodies are at the gates of hospitals in Al-Nasr, Rantisi and Al-Ayoun.”
Al-Suwaiti told the Al-Hurra website: “The Mahdi Maternity Hospital on Al-Nasr Street was also targeted in a raid last night, killing two doctors, their families and displaced people who had taken refuge in the hospital,” pointing out that Israeli tanks were at the hospital gates.
Israeli army spokeswoman Ella denies that Israeli forces are targeting or besieging hospitals, but there are “violent clashes with Hamas members around Al-Shifa hospital.”
She tells the Al-Hurra website that the Israeli army allows “those inside the hospital to exit from the eastern side, towards Salah al-Din Road and from there south to Wadi Gaza”, as she explains to the Al-Hurra website .
The hospital is under heavy fire as Israeli forces approach. Israel accuses Hamas of using the hospital as a cover for one of its leadership centers without providing evidence of this, while Hamas denies these accusations.
The Israeli non-governmental organization Doctors for Human Rights announced on Saturday the deaths of two premature newborns in the largest hospital in besieged Gaza, on the thirty-sixth day of the war in Gaza.
Marwan Abu Saada, director of the surgery department at Al-Shifa hospital, said on Saturday: “They have shelled the intensive care room. They are shooting and shelling everywhere around the hospital. It is not possible to enter or exit the hospital. The situation in the hospital is very, very dangerous.
Abu Saada added: “The people who tried to leave the hospital were shot in the street. Some of them were killed, others were injured. No one can enter the hospital and we cannot get out… There’s shooting everywhere.”
The spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qudra, said on Saturday that operations in the Al-Shifa hospital complex, the largest hospital in the Strip, stopped today, Saturday, after fuel ran out completely.
Al-Qudra added to Reuters: “As a result, one child died in the nursery section, where there are 45 newborns.”
European Union foreign policy coordinator Josep Borrell called on Sunday for an immediate cessation of fighting in the Gaza Strip and the evacuation of hospital patients in need of urgent medical care, saying the Union was deeply concerned about the worsening of the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
“These hostilities are severely affecting hospitals and inflicting horrific casualties on civilians and medical personnel,” he said in a statement.
He added: “Hospitals must (…) be immediately provided with the most urgent medical supplies and patients requiring urgent medical care must be safely evacuated.”
At the same time, he condemned what he sees as “Hamas’s use of hospitals and civilians as human shields” in the Gaza Strip, calling on Israel to exercise “maximum restraint” with the aim of protecting civilians in the war in progress. .
For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel offered to provide fuel to Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, which stopped functioning amid fierce fighting with Hamas, but the movement refused to receive it .
On Sunday, Reuters reported, Hamas denied reports that it had rejected 300 liters of fuel from Israel intended for medical use at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital.
For his part, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed on Sunday that the United States does not want armed clashes to break out inside hospitals in the Gaza Strip, which would endanger the lives of civilians, stressing that Washington has expressed its point of view to the Israeli forces.
Sullivan added in an interview with CBS News: “The United States does not want to see firefights in hospitals where innocent people and patients receiving medical care are caught in the crossfire, and we have conducted serious consultations with the Israeli military on this subject. “
Suspension of negotiations
A Palestinian official with knowledge of the hostage talks in Gaza told Reuters that the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) suspended hostage negotiations on Sunday because of what Israel is doing regarding Al-Shifa hospital.
The hospital is under heavy fire as Israeli forces approach. Israel accuses Hamas of using the hospital as a cover for one of its leadership centers without providing evidence of this, while Hamas denies these accusations.
War broke out between Israel and Hamas after a surprise attack launched by the movement on military sites and residential areas adjacent to the Gaza Strip on October 7, which led to the killing of 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and the kidnapping of 239 people. , according to Israeli authorities.
Since then, Israel has responded with intense air, sea and land bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, followed by an ongoing ground operation. The death toll in Gaza reached 11,180, including 4,609 children and 3,100 women, as well as 28,200 people. injured, as announced by the Ministry of Health, on Sunday in the Gaza Strip.