GAZA/JERUSALEM: Israeli tanks took up positions at the gates of Gaza City’s main hospital on Monday (Nov 13), the chief target in Israel’s battle to seize control of the northern half of the Gaza Strip and where medics said patients including newborns were dying for lack of fuel.
Gaza health ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qidra, who was inside Al Shifa hospital, said 32 patients had died in the last three days, including three newborn babies, as a result of the siege of the hospital and lack of power.
At least 650 patients were still inside, desperate to be evacuated to another medical facility. Israel says the hospital sits atop tunnels housing a headquarters for Hamas fighters using patients as shields, which Hamas denies.
“The tanks are in front of the hospital. We are under full blockade. It’s a totally civilian area. Only … hospital patients, doctors and other civilians staying in the hospital. Someone should stop this,” a surgeon at the hospital, Dr Ahmed El Mokhallalati, said by telephone.
“They bombed the (water) tanks, they bombed the water wells, they bombed the oxygen pump as well. They bombed everything in the hospital. So we are hardly surviving.”
US President Joe Biden said on Monday that Shifa hospital must be protected and that he hoped there would be less intrusive action there.
Israel launched its campaign last month to annihilate Hamas, the militant group that runs the Gaza Strip, after Hamas gunmen rampaged through southern Israel killing civilians. Around 1,200 people died and 240 were dragged to Gaza as hostages according to Israel’s tally.
Since then thousands of Gazans have been killed and two thirds of the population made homeless by a relentless Israeli military campaign. Israel has ordered the total evacuation of the northern half of Gaza. Gaza medical authorities say more than 11,000 people have been confirmed killed, around 40% of them children.
Source: CNA
