Hamas’ Operation in Gaza: Israel’s Most High-Energy Hospital and the Fate of the Gazan Hospital
TEL AVIV, Israel — Gaza’s largest hospital reports that it has buried more than 100 people in a mass grave, as it says bodies decompose in its courtyard and babies are dying because their incubators have no power.
The conditions at Al-Shifa Hospital, and other medical facilities in Gaza, are worsening to new unimaginable levels, according to health officials and humanitarian groups on the ground.
Paul Caney, the group’s emergency coordinators, said there was no electricity. “People are staying in the corridors because of sniper fire near the windows and that they cannot move any of the patients to ambulances.”
Hospitals have become a flash point for the war as Israel accused Hamas of turning hospitals into safe houses and command centers. The accusations were denied by both Hamas and hospital officials.
According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, more than 11200 Palestinians have died in the past 30 years. Officials report a rising death toll as Israel continues its siege on the region in response to the Oct. 7 attacks by the militant group Hamas. The health officials said there have been challenges in updating the tally because of service and communication disruptions.
The hospitals in the north are filled with injured patients and displaced Palestinians who fear being evacuated to the south.
Israel says it has focused on some hospitals in Gaza because it says Hamas is operating from military facilities underneath them, an allegation Hamas denies.
On Monday, the Israeli military released a video claiming to show Hamas tunnels underneath a hospital. Israeli military officials said that there were weapons under the hospital, which is proof of Hamas’ operations there.
Gaza health officials said the basement was “included in the design of the hospital and includes the administration and hospital stores. It has become a shelter place for displaced people fleeing the bombing to take shelter inside the hospital.”
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The youngest is not even a year old; the oldest is 14. Doctors said all of them could die from their illnesses if not treated.
According to doctors involved in the effort, 21 children have been evacuated from Gaza to hospitals in Egypt and Jordan over the past 10 days. aid workers said that in the chaos of war they can no longer reach some of the families and that at least 30 young cancer patients had not made it out.
Aid workers and doctors, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the efforts, described frantic families who lost their cell service and missed the specific days when their children had been given permission to cross into Egypt. The ambulance was supposed to make it to the meeting point but didn’t.
The family arrived at the border only to find that their child had been approved to cross and the parent’s name was not on the list.
The children’s plight is a microcosm of the suffering in Gaza since the war began just over a month ago, after Hamas launched a surprise assault that Israeli authorities say killed 1,200 people. Health officials in the Gaza Strip say more than 11,000 people have been killed by Israel.
Al-Rantisi was forced to close down completely on Friday because staff members were dragging patients outside of their beds to get to the ambulances. Israeli soldiers provided a map of what they said was a safe route through the fighting.
The organizations created a registry of children to be moved, with phone numbers for their relatives. St. Jude’s promised to take care of their patients in Egypt.
But the names of the children had to be added to a daily list of those approved to pass through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, which was no simple task. No evacuations occurred over the course of two weeks.