Nov 19, 2023 at 8:22 AM Update: 17 minutes ago
A team of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) visited Al Shifa Hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip on Saturday. The hospital is no longer able to function and is a “zone of death”, the team saw.
The team could only spend an hour in the medical complex for safety reasons. But that was enough to determine that the hospital is no longer functioning. “There is no water, no food, no electricity, no fuel and medical supplies are exhausted,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X on Saturday.
A lot of damage was caused by air raids and shelling. The team also saw a mass grave at the entrance to Al Shifa Hospital. The experts were told that there would be more than eighty people inside.
The corridors and hospital grounds are full of (medical) waste. Patients and medical workers fear for their own safety and health, a WHO statement said.
Al Shifa Hospital not only had a medical function, but had also become a refuge for many people in the north of the Gaza Strip from the intense violence. Israeli troops invaded the hospital on Wednesday, after heavy fighting had been going on around the complex for some time.
According to the Israeli army, a Hamas command center is located in tunnels under the hospital. No concrete and verified evidence has yet been presented for this. Hamas and the hospital administration deny this claim.
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WHO wants to quickly evacuate patients and healthcare workers
Most citizens have now been evacuated from the hospital. According to the WHO, there are still 291 patients, including 32 babies in “extremely critical condition”, and 25 healthcare workers in hospital.
“WHO and its partners are urgently developing a plan for the immediate evacuation of remaining patients, staff and their families,” the organization said.
The group visiting the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip included health experts, logisticians and security personnel from various branches of the United Nations.
2023-11-19 07:22:15
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