As Israeli military vehicles close in on the gates of the besieged Al-Shifa hospital complex, the Gazan Health Ministry claims the situation inside the hospital is "catastrophic" and "calamitous" as it runs out of fuel and medicines.
After the oxygen supply ran out, the hospital struggled to keep the injured and unwell alive. No power also means dozens of corpses are decomposing at the hospital with no way to preserve or remove them.
With incubators cut off, the staff had to remove the babies by hand from the neonatal unit’s defunct incubators. The premature babies were then wrapped in foil and placed next to hot water in a desperate bid to keep them warm, according to the hospital authorities.
Images from the hospital show the babies huddled together in one bed. "There is no more water, food, milk for children and babies… the situation in the hospital is catastrophic," the director of the medical centre Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya told CNN on Monday.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, 15 patients have died in recent days, including six newborns, due to power outages and a shortage of medical supplies.
Shifa staff members also had to perform surgery on war-wounded patients, including children, without anaesthesia. As of now, over 650 patients and 500 staff remain in the hospital. Around 2,500 displaced Palestinians are also sheltering inside, as evident from the satellite images.
Dr Medhat Abbas, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, told CNN that medical staff at Al-Shifa kept four infants alive after their mothers died by performing C-sections. "Now they have to make it without their mothers and without electricity… Can you imagine that?" he said. "When these babies are born prematurely, to sustain their lives they need to have the same temperature as their mother. This temperature can only be offered in the incubators, which are heated properly," Abbas said.
He warned that the situation would only worsen as winter draws in.
Medics are now reportedly working by candlelight. Food is limited and people survive on pipe water. The hospital is not functioning anymore and whoever needs surgery dies.
Without electricity or fuel, dozens of corpses are decomposing at the hospital because there is no way to preserve or remove them, a chief nurse and a health official said.
Not just Shifa, fighting has been ongoing near al-Quds and al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital too. The functioning of these hospitals has since been impaired. The al-Nasr Children’s Hospital and al-Rantisi Specialised Hospital for Children can no longer function without access to medical aid.
Israel claims Hamas members are hiding in the tunnels beneath the hospitals. Tel Aviv has so far not provided proof for its claims that the command centre of the militant group functions from the tunnels.
The IDF is in the process of coordinating the transfer of incubators from a hospital in Israel to Gaza. pic.twitter.com/C8jyv0g3sE
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) November 14, 2023
However, Israel’s military said it offered to evacuate newborn babies and placed 300 litres of fuel at the entrance of the hospital, which was not received. The IDF claimed that it was also coordinating the transfer of incubators into the Gaza Strip, as a possible measure to enable the evacuation. It was also posted on social media with an image of a soldier unloading incubators from a van.
