The Al Shifa Hospital is Gaza City’s largest and one of the few still somewhat operational.
New Delhi:
Gaza’s biggest hospital has buried 179 people, including babies, in a “mass grave” inside its compound, Al Shifa Hospital chief Mohammad Abu Salmiyah said Tuesday, underlining the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the region. “We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” the hospital director said.
Seven babies and 29 patients from the intensive care unit were buried after the hospital’s fuel supplies ran out. “There are bodies littered in the hospital complex. There is no more electricity…”
A journalist, who is collaborating with AFP, said the stench of decomposing bodies was everywhere. A surgeon at the hospital, working with Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, called the situation “inhuman”. “We don’t have electricity. There’s no water. There’s no food.”
The Al Shifa Hospital is Gaza City’s largest and was cut off from the world for over 72 hours last week after a deadly blockade by Israeli forces that included tanks at the front gates; Tel Aviv insists the hospital sits atop a network of tunnels that form part of the Hamas’ underground headquarters.
READ | Israeli Tanks Outside Gaza Hospital, Doctors Say “Stuck In Circle Of Death”
Israel has accused the terror group of using hospitals and patients as human shields, an accusation the Hamas and Gaza health officials have denied. In a separate incident, Israel claimed to have discovered a tunnel leading into another hospital from the home of a known Hamas operative.
READ | Hamas Tunnel With Bulletproof Doors Leads To Gaza Hospital, Claims Israel
The United Nations believes thousands, and perhaps more than 10,000 – including patients, staff and displaced civilians – may be inside Al Shifa and unable to escape because of fierce fighting nearby.
The surviving babies are at risk of contracting viruses because they have no immunity.
Al Quds, a second major hospital in the area, has been cut off from the world for a week.
Hospitals, and medical personnel, are protected under international humanitarian law and parties in conflict must ensure their protection. They cannot be used to shield military objectives from attack, but any operation around or within must protect patients, staff, and other civilians, the United Nations’ Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its Monday update from Gaza.
Israel had pledged to help evacuate the babies. That has not happened so far.
Earlier today, a heart-breaking image emerged from the same hospital – of seven babies bundled together, some in non-descript, hospital-green fabric and others with tubes sticking out of them.
READ | Gaza Babies Laid In Rows For Warmth; “I Had 39, Now 36 Left”, Says Doctor
The seven are among 39 born prematurely – they weigh less than 1.5 kg each. Each should be in incubators so body temperatures can be regulated. Instead, they were moved to ordinary beds – placed side-by-side and covered by packets of nappies and cardboard boxes of sterile gauze – over the weekend because there is no more fuel to run the generators that power the incubators.
“Yesterday I had 39 babies… today 36,” Dr Mohamed Tabasha, the paediatric head, told Reuters Monday. “I cannot say how long they can last. I can lose another two babies today… or in an hour.”
By the end of the day three more (and nine adult patients) had died, AFP reported.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the assault has already killed 11,240 people, most of whom are civilians and at least 40 per cent of whom were children.
Israel has vowed “vengeance” for the Hamas’ October 7 terror attack that killed over 1,200, including children, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming under growing international pressure – after many Western nations first refused to openly criticise Tel Aviv for its brutal attacks.
In the face of that pressure, Israel has agreed to daily pauses in military operations around specified humanitarian “corridors” to allow civilians to flee fighting. However, Israel has so far resisted calls for a broader ceasefire, insisting this will not be allowed before all of the Hamas’ hostages are released.
With input from agencies
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