Heavy attacks on Gaza heighten fears for people trapped in Shifa hospital

Palestinian Territories — AFP

Israeli attacks raged around Gaza’s biggest hospital Sunday where doctors said thousands of Palestinians were trapped in dire conditions.

Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital is caught in Israel’s ground offensive aimed at “destroying Hamas”, and the compound has been repeatedly hit by strikes, one of which destroyed the entire cardiac ward on Sunday, killing patients on life support or undergoing cardiac treatment.

The Israeli military has denied deliberately targeting the hospital and has accused Hamas of using medical facilities or tunnels under them as hideouts — a charge that comes backed up by no evidence and is outrightly rejected by Hamas.

Fears have intensified for patients and people taking refuge inside Al-Shifa and other healthcare facilities in Gaza. Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders has warned that without a cease-fire the hospital “will become a morgue”.

Other buildings serving as shelters have also been hit, including a strike on a UN compound in Gaza City that the United Nations Development Program said had caused “a significant number of deaths and injuries.”

Witnesses inside the Al-Shifa hospital reported that “violent attacks” had raged around the hospital the whole night.

– Dire conditions in Gaza hospitals –

Inside Al-Shifa hospital, Doctors Without Borders surgeon Mohammed Obeid said there was no water, power, food or internet access for about 600 post-operative patients, 37-40 babies and 17 people in intensive care.

The surgeon said in an audio message posted Saturday on social media that two babies had died in the Al-Shifa neonatal unit after power to their incubators was cut off and a man also died when his ventilator shut down.

Twenty of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are “no longer functioning”, according to the UN’s humanitarian agency.

Very little aid has made it into Gaza in the five weeks of war, with the densely populated coastal territory effectively sealed off by a total blockade that Israel has vowed to maintain until its people held by Hamas are freed.

– Many thousands flee south –

Perched on trucks, crammed in cars, pulled by donkeys on carts, and on foot, many thousands of Palestinians have fled Israeli army strikes on the territory squeezed between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean.

Youssef Mehna, one of many who moved south, said his sick wife is in a wheelchair so he had to rent “carts pulled by donkeys, trucks, cars” to transport her.

Sometimes, between rides, they were forced to go on foot. “So it was me who pushed my wife’s chair,” he said.

Almost 1.6 million people have been internally displaced since October 7, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA. This equals about two-thirds of Gaza’s population.

However, people arriving in the south were no longer able to find tents or improvised shelter, with some sleeping in the streets.

Strikes were also hitting buildings at the southern end of Gaza in Rafah, the area to which civilians have been urged to evacuate.

A strike in southern Bani Suheila destroyed a dozen houses on Sunday, killing at least four people and wounded at least 30.