179 buried in 'mass grave' in Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital
The director of Gaza's biggest hospital said Tuesday that 179 people, including babies and patients who died in the intensive care unit, had been buried in a "mass grave" at the complex.
"We were forced to bury them in a mass grave," said Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiyah, adding that seven babies and 29 intensive care patients were among those buried after the hospital's fuel supplies ran out.
Battles between Israel and Hamas around hospitals forced thousands of Palestinians to flee from some of the last perceived safe places in northern Gaza, stranding critically wounded patients, newborns and their caregivers with dwindling supplies and no electricity.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Shifa hospital “ must be protected ” and called for “less intrusive action” by Israeli forces.
Shifa has been without electricity and water for three days and “is not functioning as a hospital anymore,” said World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Sunday. He said there has been gunfire and bombings outside the compound.
Patients there include dozens of babies at risk of dying because of a lack of electricity, health officials at the facility said.
For Palestinians, Shifa and the other hospitals in the combat zone evoke the suffering of civilians. U.N. monitors said Tuesday that only one hospital in northern Gaza is still operating, with the others forced to shut down because of nearby fighting and the lack of fuel, power, water and medicine.
For weeks, Shifa staff members running low on supplies have performed surgery on war-wounded patients, including children, without anesthesia. After the weekend's mass exodus, about 650 patients and 500 staff remain in the hospital, which can no longer function, along with around 2,500 displaced Palestinians sheltering inside with little food or water.
After power for Shifa’s incubators went out days ago, the Health Ministry in Gaza on Monday released a photo it says shows about a dozen premature babies wrapped in blankets together on a bed to keep them at a proper temperature. Otherwise, “they immediately die,” said the Health Ministry’s director general, Medhat Abbas, who added that four of the babies had been delivered by cesarean section after their mothers died.
Goudat Samy al-Madhoun, a health care worker, said he was among around 50 patients, staff and displaced people who made it out of Shifa and to the south Monday, including a woman who had been receiving kidney dialysis. He said those remaining in the hospital were mainly eating dates.
Al-Madhoun said Israeli forces fired on the group several times, wounding one man who had to be left behind. The dialysis patient's son was detained at an Israeli checkpoint on the road south, he said.
As of last Friday, more than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. About 2,700 people have been reported missing.
Health officials have not updated the toll, citing the difficulty of collecting information.
At least 1,200 people have died on the Israeli side in the initial Hamas attack. Palestinian militants are holding nearly 240 hostages seized in the raid, including children, women, men and older adults. The military says 44 soldiers have been killed in ground operations in Gaza.
About 250,000 Israelis have evacuated from communities near Gaza, where Palestinian militants still fire barrages of rockets, and along the northern border, where Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah repeatedly trade fire.
Source: Agence France Presse, Associated Press
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