The Israeli army’s noose has closed on Gaza’s hospitals. The troops advance into the heart of the city, they surround the buildings around which tanks and armored bulldozers are active. They are fighting Hamas militiamen on the ground in their immediate surroundings, under intense air support. Hospitals, the last refuges of Gazan civilians, are collapsing: since Friday evening, November 10, electricity and the Internet have been cut. Oxygen is lacking.
Al-Shifa, the largest settlement in Gaza City, is became “an open war zone”, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. Sunday, November 12, in the morning, the cardiology department was hit by a projectile. According to the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health, based in Ramallah (West Bank), “39 babies in intensive care are in danger of death due to insufficient oxygen, and one baby has died due to this problem. If fuel is not delivered to hospitals, it will amount to a death sentence for others. »
The director general of Gaza’s hospitals implored neighboring Egypt on Sunday to intervene by sending a convoy of medical vehicles to evacuate the injured. “We are a war zone, confirm to World Mohamed Hawadjari, a nurse working for the NGO Médecins sans frontières (MSF). Our offices are 300 meters from Al-Shifa. I went to the hospital yesterday [samedi]. It was shooting everywhere. In the streets, in ruins, injured people and dead people littered the ground. In the canvas and tent camps set up in Al-Shifa for the displaced, people who tried to leave were shot at. On the way back to the MSF offices, I couldn’t even pay attention to the people who were injured and fallen to the ground because there was so much shooting everywhere, blindly. They shoot from drones, planes. Sometimes they are snipers. »
In the hospital, which still houses 3,000 patients, including 650 injured who cannot move around on their own, total chaos reigned on Saturday. “There is no longer any administration, any direction. I tried to find someone responsible yesterday, but no one is there. This is a catastrophic situation, continues Mohamed Hawadjari. I tried to find some medical supplies for the injured. There were no medical supplies, no more anesthetics. No generator is working due to lack of fuel. There aren’t many doctors left, most of them have left. Today it is even more dangerous. People who try to leave are targeted, they are besieged. Save their lives. They are civilians! »
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