Hospitals in northern Gaza, trapped in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, are now all “out of service”, the Palestinian Islamist movement announced on Monday, claiming that babies and sick people had already died due to the lack of electricity.
Several hundred sick people are still in the al-Chifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, which also shelters thousands of civilians who have come to seek refuge there. The situation there is “serious and dangerous” after “three days without electricity, without water”, according to the head of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Israel claims that Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, has installed its infrastructure in a network of tunnels under the hospital, transformed into a war zone while doctors and humanitarian organizations continue to sound the alarm on the fate of thousands of civilians and sick people.
According to witnesses, new airstrikes targeted this area during the night from Sunday to Monday, while tanks and armored vehicles were deployed a few meters from the al-Chifa hospital.
The Hamas government’s deputy health minister, Youssef Abou Rich, told AFP on Monday that “seven premature babies” and “27 patients in intensive care” had died since Saturday due to the lack of electricity in this area. hospital, a huge complex located in the heart of Gaza City.
” Tanks [israéliens] are completely besieging” this hospital where there are “650 patients, around forty children in incubators, all threatened with death,” he said the day before.
The deputy minister added Monday that “all hospitals” in the northern Gaza Strip were now “out of service.” Caught in the fighting, these hospitals also lack the fuel necessary to operate the generators, in the territory besieged by Israel and deprived in particular of electricity.
The UN Office for Humanitarian Coordination (Ocha) indicated that 20 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were no longer functioning in recent days.
As international aid slowly arrives from Egypt, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh on Monday called on the UN and the European Union to “drop aid” on Gaza.
A Turkish humanitarian ship carrying field hospitals for the Gaza Strip for the first time has arrived at the Egyptian port of Al-Arish, near the Rafah border crossing, according to a port official.
“Intense fighting”
Israel has relentlessly struck the Gaza Strip since the deadly attack launched on its soil against civilians by Hamas commandos on October 7, and has been carrying out a parallel ground operation since October 27 with the aim of “wiping out” the movement. Islamist, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
On the Israeli side, at least 1,200 people have been killed since the start of the war, according to the authorities, the vast majority of them civilians killed on the day of the attack, of a scale and violence never seen since the creation of Israel in 1948.
The Israeli army announced on Monday that 44 soldiers had been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. She estimates that some 240 people were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip during the October 7 attack.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the American channel NBC about the possibility of an agreement to release some of the hostages, a condition according to him for any cease-fire.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli bombings have killed 11,180 people since October 7, mostly civilians, including 4,609 children, according to the Hamas health ministry.
On Monday, flags were flown at half-mast on United Nations buildings around the world, in memory of UN personnel killed since the start of the war.
The fighting is concentrated in the heart of Gaza City, in the north of the territory, particularly around several hospitals suspected by the Israeli army of housing strategic infrastructures of Hamas, which according to it uses the population as “shields”. humans.”
Israel announced that an evacuation “corridor” would remain in place on Monday to allow civilians to leave al-Chifa hospital, while admitting that the area was in the grip of “intense fighting”.
On Monday, the Israeli army announced that its soldiers “continued to carry out raids, targeting terrorist infrastructures installed in government buildings, in the heart of the civilian population, including in schools, universities, mosques”.
“Death Scenes”
“The world cannot remain silent when hospitals, which should be havens of peace, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, despair. Ceasefire now,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Doctors have posted images online showing them operating with candles, flashlights, or only with the lights of cell phones, due to lack of electricity in hospitals.
The Israeli army assured Sunday that it had “offered to provide fuel for the urgent needs of the hospital” al-Chifa, but added that “the Hamas leadership was preventing the hospital from collecting the fuel.”
The director of the hospital, Mohammed Abou Salmiya, told AFP that the Israeli army had informed him that it would deliver fuel, but that the 300 liters offered was very insufficient.
“I told them: ‘If you want to help, I need at least 8,000 liters to run the main generators and save hundreds of patients and injured people’, they refused and we don’t know where the situation is. situation,” added Mr. Abou Salmiya.
On Monday, the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, Janez Lenarcic, called on Israel to implement “real” humanitarian pauses. “The fuel must come in,” he insisted.
Israel refuses to let the fuel enter Gaza, saying it could benefit Hamas’s military operations.
Besides al-Chifa, the situation remains complicated in other hospitals, according to Mohammed Zaqout, the director of Gaza hospitals.
Sick people “are in the streets without care,” he said, after the “forced evacuations” of two pediatric hospitals, al-Nasr and al-Rantissi.
Another hospital in Gaza City, al-Quds, stopped operating on Sunday due to lack of fuel, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The Palestinian territory, where around 1.6 of the 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war according to the UN, has been subject to a total siege imposed by Israel since October 9, which deprives the population of water, electricity, food and medicine.
Nearly 200,000 Palestinians, according to the Israeli army, had fled in three days, as of Saturday, the north of the territory via “corridors” opened daily, to take refuge in the south where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are crowded together in disastrous humanitarian conditions.
Around 980 trucks loaded with international aid have arrived in the Gaza Strip since October 21, according to OCHA.