A family of four carrying a white flag was trying to escape this Saturday morning from the Shifa hospital in Gaza, besieged by the Israeli army, when they fell victim to fire from the troops. A few meters after stepping onto the street, several shots killed the mother and one of the two children and left the father and the other minor injured. Dr. Khaled Abu Hamra, one of the doctors who are still in the main health center in the capital of the Strip, tells EL PAÍS in a telephone conversation. He assures that it happened around noon and, more than an hour later, they have not even been able to collect the bodies.
“We need to evacuate the hospital now, but they shoot anyone who tries to escape,” adds the doctor, who describes a situation of “complete chaos,” without internet, electricity, food or water and with “many victims on the ground.” Neither patients nor refugee citizens nor staff can leave the facilities due to constant shelling and shooting, Abu Hamra denounces.
20 of the 30 hospitals in the Gaza Strip do not function, according to the Palestinian Minister of Health, Mai Al-Kaila, who assures that operations are carried out on the ground and without anesthesia. The lack of electricity supply at the Shifa hospital keeps 38 premature babies in incubators at “risk of death” due to lack of oxygen, the minister added in a statement. One of the babies had died a while before I updated that information.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also warns of the difficulties with “thousands of injured, displaced and medical personnel at risk,” according to the regional director of the institution, Fabrizio Carboni, on the social network X (formerly Twitter). , while requesting that they be protected according to the laws of war.
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The situation is “catastrophic” at the Shifa hospital, according to a statement from Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which continues to have staff at the facilities. One of them, Dr. Mohammed Obeid, warned on Friday: “There are many recently operated patients who cannot walk. They can’t evacuate. They need an ambulance to transport them, and we do not have ambulances to evacuate all this number of patients,” according to the testimony transcribed by the NGO, which also demands that the attacks on hospitals stop.
The alternative is to leave on foot, with Israeli troops already fighting in the heart of Gaza City, where the hospital is located. “We can’t leave the hospital. We cannot leave because from morning until now we have operated on 25 patients. If I or the other surgeon are not there, who will take care of the patients?” adds the health worker. “As a doctor, I swore to help people who need help. So if they want to bomb me, I will not be better than the others,” concludes Obeid.
Israel claims to have killed a Hamas official, Ahmed Tsiam, who was holding some 1,000 Gazans “hostage” in the Rantisi hospital and not allowing them to leave the city to the south, as demanded by the military authorities. Tsiam was at a nearby school with other classmates when he was attacked, according to Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari.
The siege of Israeli troops on hospital centers in northern Gaza has increasingly tightened in recent days. Military spokespersons insist that these infrastructures, although they host the wounded, civilian refugees and medical personnel, are also bases for Hamas militiamen, whom they accuse of fighting without uniform to be confused with civilians. According to the army, Hamas maintains one of its command centers in a facility located below the Shifa hospital.
Since the war began on October 7, more than 11,000 Gazans have already died, most of them women and children, victims of the Israeli military operation.
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