While Israel continues to prepare a ground operation against Hamas this Monday, tens of thousands of Gazans have already fled the north of the Gaza Strip. However, not everyone can leave, like the wounded who continue to arrive at the main hospital in the enclave.
Gaza City’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, is overflowing. There are around 2,000 injured for a capacity of 700 beds and there are also tens of thousands of civilians who have come to seek refuge. These wounded who continue to arrive are among those who cannot leave. However, the Israeli army has urged Gazans living in the north of the territory, 1.1 million people out of a total population of 2.4 million, to flee south as quickly as possible as it prepares a ground offensive in northern Gaza Strip.
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Tens of thousands of Gaza residents have already reached the south, according to the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs, and are trying to find shelter, food and water there. At the same time, the Gaza Strip is relentlessly shelled by Israel which wants to destroy Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement responsible for the deadliest attack committed on its soil, on Saturday October 7. And with each of these airstrikes, a new flow of people arrives at Al-Shifa Hospital. “The situation is very critical. The evacuation that we are being asked to do is really very complicated. It is even impossible and very dangerous. It endangers the lives of patients and we do not have the means. Where are we going to take them? The other hospitals that are helping, we have also asked them to evacuate the injured and the staff. We can’t.”, says Doctor Nadel Labed, emergency doctor. It’s impossible, he explains, to evacuate someone who is intubated.”
“If we leave the hospital, where will we go?”
Hala, 40, who remains at the bedside of her 11-year-old niece, seriously injured in a bombing, wonders where to go, where to leave. “His father is dead, his brother too, says Hala. When she asks me where they are, I tell her they are on their way. She doesn’t know yet that they are dead. And if we leave the hospital, where will she and her mother who is also injured go? Where are we going to go? I cannot accommodate them. I too had to leave my house. We all fled. There is nowhere to go and everywhere there are bombings.”explains this 40-year-old woman.
Due to lack of space, the child waits to be operated on in a corridor, lying on the floor. “She has several injuries, describes his aunt Hala. She will have to have surgery on her leg. She is also affected in the head, in the foot, the whole body is impacted”.
Hala is still in shock from the attack: “My sister and my niece are the only survivors of their family. There were several of them in the same house, around 35 people. And suddenly, a bomb fell on the building. There are more than ten dead, including children, women and the elderly. There are still bodies under the rubble that we cannot extract. We were only able to bury four people.”. Added to the mourning is the threat of the ground offensive that the Israeli army intends to carry out.