by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Emily Rose and Maayan Lubell
GAZA/JERUSALEM – Two major hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip closed their doors to new patients on Sunday, with staff saying Israeli bombing and lack of fuel and medicine risk leading to the deaths of people already being treated in institutions.
Hospitals in the north of the Palestinian enclave are blocked by Israeli forces and are barely able to treat patients there, according to medical staff. Israel says it is focusing on Hamas fighters in the region and that hospitals should be evacuated.
Gaza’s largest hospital, Al Chifa, and another major facility, Al Quds, both announced they were suspending operations on Sunday.
A surgeon at Al Chifa Hospital said the bombing of a building housing incubators forced medical teams to place premature babies in ordinary beds, using what little energy was available to run the air conditioning in order to warm them up.
“We know it’s very risky,” said Doctor Ahmed El Mokhallalati. “We expect to lose more and more every day.”
Speaking inside Al Chifa hospital, Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al Qidra told Reuters that the Israeli fire “terrorizes the staff medical and civilians.
Israel says Hamas has placed command centers under and near hospitals and that its army must reach them to free the nearly 200 hostages the Islamist group took in Israel in a series of attacks in early October . Hamas denies using hospitals in this way.
On Sunday, a Palestinian official briefed on the hostage release negotiations said Hamas had suspended negotiations because of Israel’s treatment of Al Chifa Hospital.
“NOBODY ENTER, NOBODY OUT”
Hamas and Israel had no immediate comment. Israel believes that military pressure is the only way to obtain the release of the hostages. Officials in Qatar, which is mediating the talks, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Israeli army on Sunday reiterated its proposal to evacuate babies from Al Shifa, but Palestinian officials said heavy fighting near the facility was preventing any safe exit, as newborns died and dozens of others are threatened by a power cut.
According to Achraf al Qidra, three babies out of 45 died.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the hospital was offered fuel but refused it, without giving details.
According to Mohammad Qandil, a doctor at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, who is in contact with his colleagues there, Al Chifa is now closed to new wounded.
“Chifa Hospital is no longer functioning, no one is allowed in and no one is allowed out,” he said.
The World Health Organization said it had lost contact with the hospital and expressed concern about the people stranded there.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Al Quds Hospital was also out of service, with staff struggling to treat people already there with little medicine, food and water.
“WORLD CUP”
“Al Quds hospital has been cut off from the world for the last six or seven days. There are no entries or exits,” said Tommaso Della Longa, spokesperson for the International Federation of Societies of the Cross. -Red and Red Crescent.
Israel assured on Sunday that it was possible to safely evacuate three hospitals in northern Gaza, including Al Chifa.
Faced with the worsening humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, 80 foreigners and several wounded Palestinians crossed into Egypt during the first evacuations since Friday, according to four Egyptian security sources.
Poland said 18 of them were its citizens, while U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS News that U.S. nationals would be evacuated from the Gaza Strip within a day. Sunday.
At least 80 aid trucks left Egypt for Gaza on Sunday afternoon, according to two of the sources. Jordan said earlier it had parachuted a second batch to a field hospital.
Very little aid has entered Gaza since Israel declared war on Hamas more than a month ago, after Islamist commandos carried out massacres of civilians in southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 11,000 people have since been killed in Gaza, around 40% of them children, according to the latest figures from local health services.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Maayan Lubell, Maytaal Angel and Emily Rose in Jerusalem; French version Camille Raynaud, Tangi Salaün and Benjamin Mallet)
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