The Israeli army appears to be tightening the net around hospitals in Gaza. The fuel for the generators has run out, the power is out and tanks are said to be surrounding hospitals. Confirmation is difficult to obtain because contact with the medical staff has been lost.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has had no contact with its people in Al-Shifa for two days. Heavy fighting would rage around the hospital. Perhaps the doctors have left with their patients, the WHO suggests, and are on their way, along with the refugees who had sought shelter in the hospital.
Israel said it had opened a corridor for Al-Shifa on Sunday morning and imposed a four-hour fighting pause in Jabalia, near the hospital. Israel had also offered to help take the incubator babies to “a safe hospital.” At the end of the afternoon there was still no certainty about the condition of Al-Shifa’s doctors and patients. Western reporters also make futile attempts to contact doctors at the hospital.
The news channel Al Jazeera reported on Sunday afternoon that an airstrike killed thirteen people and destroyed the hospital’s main cardiac department. Earlier this weekend, images emerged from Al-Shifa showing at least twenty newborn babies wrapped in blankets and laid out in rows on adult beds in an operating room. The babies have been removed from their incubators because they no longer work.
Two premature babies are said to have already died as a result. The lives of 37 others are feared. Al Jazeera quotes director Abu Salmiya: “Unfortunately, we lost two of the 39 babies due to a lack of fuel that provides warmth and a constant supply of oxygen. We had power until this morning. Once the power goes out, these newborns will fare just like the others.”
On Friday evening, all contact was also lost with the Indonesian hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip. One of the three volunteers of the Indonesian aid organization MER-C, Fikri Rofiul Haq, had posted two more videos on Instagram on Thursday. One of them shows boxes full of dates being delivered – according to Haq, breakfast and dinner for the 170-strong medical staff.
The second video showed a completely different picture: people carrying in the injured and dead and placing them in the crowded corridors of the hospital. Children’s faces covered in dust, mixed with blood. Israel has again carried out attacks in Jabalia, says the Indonesian: “One shelling left 68 dead and dozens injured, and almost all victims are taken to this hospital.”
On Friday, Haq will post another, last for now, video. It shows the hospital corridors shrouded in darkness, where the power has just gone out. We’re out of fuel. In the caption he says they are trying to get cooking oil to use as fuel for a small generator. That video is the last that his aid organization MER-C in Jakarta also heard from him, a spokesperson for MER-C said in a message..
Al Jazeera reports on Sunday that Israeli tanks surround Al-Shifa. Doctors Without Borders says tanks have been seen around the Rantisi Children’s Hospital, and the Palestinian Red Crescent reports that Al-Quds hospital has also been surrounded by Israeli tanks. According to Israel, Hamas tunnel complexes and underground command centers lie beneath the hospitals.
Reuters news agency quotes WHO Secretary General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as saying that “in Gaza, on average, a child dies every ten minutes.” According to him, two-thirds of the 36 hospitals in Gaza are no longer functioning and the rest are severely overloaded. “Healthcare is on its knees.”
