A state of uncertainty prevails over the current situation in Al-Shifa Medical Complex after the Israeli occupation forces re-stormed it, destroyed its facilities, bulldozed its courtyards, and completely isolated it from the world due to a power and Internet outage, coinciding with a communications outage in the Gaza Strip.
The Director General of Hospitals in the Gaza Strip, Dr. Muhammad Zaqout, said that the Ministry has lost contact since last night with the medical teams inside the Shifa Complex, and does not know what happened to them.
He added that the Ministry received calls from relief agencies and the International Red Cross to evacuate some patients and premature babies to internal hospitals, but the lack of capacity prompts the Ministry to request that they be transferred to Egypt to receive treatment.
The director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salamiya, conveyed a picture of the difficult conditions experienced by more than 7,000 people, including the wounded, the sick, the displaced, and the medical staff in the hospital, 48 hours after it was occupied by Israeli soldiers, and the bombing of a number of sections of the complex, its pharmacy, and its northern wall.
Abu Salamiya said, in a phone call with Al Jazeera, that everyone in the hospital is besieged and exposed to slow death, noting that there are 750 wounded among them, more than 36 premature babies, 45 dialysis patients, and 5,000 displaced people, in light of complete Arab and international silence.
He added that they are unable to treat children due to the lack of medicine, and that anyone who falls ill in Gaza Governorate at the present time may be at risk of death.
Conflicting Israeli narratives
There were conflicting Israeli accounts regarding the presence of a command center for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Al-Shifa Hospital, as the Israeli army deleted a video clip of its spokesman inside the hospital after storming it and published a new, modified clip, which raised questions about the truth of the Israeli allegations regarding the medical complex.
In a press conference, the Israeli military spokesman said that the Israeli occupation forces found a tunnel opening within the Shifa complex and a car bomb. As part of what he said was a complex operation and ongoing research, the Israeli army searched all the hospital buildings after bulldozing its courtyards.
Hamas denied the Israeli story and American allegations about its use of hospitals and schools as military sites, describing it as a scandal to the Israeli army.
Israel intensified its raids on the north, center and south of the Gaza Strip, including bombing a gas station where displaced people had taken shelter. The bombing also targeted Al-Salam Mill, the last wheat mill in Gaza.
At dawn last Wednesday, the Israeli army stormed the Al-Shifa Medical Complex west of Gaza City, after besieging it for days, as it contains civilians displaced from their homes as a result of the continuous Israeli bombing in the area for 42 days, resulting in the martyrdom of 11,500 Palestinians, including 4,710 children and 3,160 women, in addition to 29,800 injured, most of them children and women, according to official Palestinian sources.
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2023-11-17 06:04:30
