director of al-Chifa hospital in Gaza says ‘179 bodies’ were buried in mass grave

The al-Chifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, at the heart of the fighting between Israel and Hamas, had to bury at least “179 bodies” in a mass grave, announced its director on Tuesday, November 14. Several thousand Palestinians, patients, staff and civilians displaced by the war that has raged since October 7, are crowding the hospital site.

“There are bodies littering the aisles of the hospital complex and the refrigerated rooms of the morgues are no longer supplied” in electricity, the director of al-Chifa hospital told AFP. “We were forced to bury them in a mass grave”, said Doctor Mohammed Abou Salmiya, specifying that among these bodies were those of seven premature babies who died due to lack of electricity to keep them alive. A journalist working with AFP inside the hospital said the smell of decomposing bodies was overpowering.

Since Friday, numerous testimonies have reportedan intensification of fighting around al-Chifa. The hospital is a huge complex in the center of Gaza City, housing, according to Israel, infrastructure of the Islamist movement in a network of tunnels.