The health ministry in Gaza has said that 24 patients have died in the past two days at Al-Shifa hospital owing to power cuts, as Israeli forces search the facility for Hamas hideouts, AFP reports.
“Twenty four patients in different departments have died over the last 48 hours as vital medical equipment has stopped functioning because of the power outage,” said ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra.
Hundreds of patients desperately needed his help, but now there was nothing he could do. With Al Ahli hospital shaking from Israeli tank fire and no more anaesthetics left to operate, British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta told his team it was time to leave the last fully functioning hospital in Gaza City, Reuters reports.
“It has been a living nightmare — leaving 500 wounded knowing that there’s nothing left for you to be able to do for them, it’s just the most heartbreaking thing I ever had to do,” Abu Sitta told Reuters, a day after leaving the hospital and walking to Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
In a post on X, he wrote: “No longer able to provide surgeries at Ahli hospital. The hospital is now effectively a first aid station. Hundreds of wounded now at hospital with no access to surgery. They will die from their wounds.”
A doctor at the Gaza Strip’s Al-Shifa hospital said that food and water were running out and that supplies provided by the Israeli military were “very, very minimal,” Reuters reports.
Doctor Ahmed El Mokhallalati told Reuters by telephone that Israeli forces were pressing on with searches of the hospital complex, but had “found nothing”.
Israel says Hamas has a command centre underneath the hospital, an assertion the Palestinian group denies.
Israeli troops carried out building-by-building searches at Gaza’s main hospital, as a new communications blackout in the territory on Friday compounded fears for Palestinian civilians trapped inside the facility.
Israel’s brutal air bombardment and ground operation has killed more than 11,500 Palestinians, including thousands of children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Allegations about the hospital have not been verified, and on Friday communications with the Gaza Strip were severed once again.
Network provider Paltel group said all telecommunications were down because “all energy sources sustaining the network have been depleted, and fuel was not allowed in”.—Agencies
