Hundreds of people left the al-Chifa hospital in Gaza on Saturday, which had been besieged for several days by the Israeli army, according to an AFP journalist, with the Hamas Ministry of Health specifying that “120 wounded” and premature babies could not be evacuated.
Officials at the facility had previously indicated that 450 sick and injured people could not be evacuated. Doctors remained in al-Chifa to care for patients, they said.
The Israeli army claims to have not given any evacuation order but to have “responded to a request” from the hospital director.
Currently, according to the UN, 2,300 patients, caregivers and displaced people are in this establishment and international concern is growing for their fate. Israel assures that Hamas, in power in Gaza, uses this establishment as a military base.
For days, Israeli soldiers have been entering al-Chifa services to question those present inside and searching “building by building” according to the Israeli army, the medical complex is the largest in the Gaza Strip.
The hospital director had already refused this week a previous evacuation order received by telephone, citing in particular the complexity of the operation.
The electricity stopped working there several days ago and its department heads report that several dozen patients have died “because vital medical equipment stopped working due to the power outage.”
Daily fuel delivery
At the request of the United States, Israel authorized the daily entry of two tanker trucks into the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, responsible for the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border, announced Friday evening that 17,000 liters of fuel had been delivered to power the generators of the Gazan telecommunications company.
Israel has so far refused to let the fuel pass, claiming that it could benefit the military activities of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement in power in Gaza since 2007 and classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
The population of the small territorytrapped in the war triggered by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, faces “an immediate risk of famine”warned the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).
During the night from Friday to Saturday, an attack against three buildings in Khan Younes left 26 dead and 23 seriously injured, according to the director of Nasser Hospital in this town in the center of the Gaza Strip.
“We don’t ask for the moon. We demand basic measures necessary to meet the essential needs of the civilian population and stem the course of this crisis.“, protested the head of UN humanitarian operations Martin Griffiths, in a video intervention in New York.
The announced deliveries represent only a small part of the quantities of fuel, 50 trucks, which entered the Gaza Strip daily before the start of the war, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). This agency announced on Friday that it would soon no longer be able to coordinate the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza due to the communications cut.
“Disaster” at the hospital
In the al-Chifa hospital, the largest in the territory which was stormed by the Israeli army on Wednesday, the situation is “catastrophic” for patients, displaced people and caregivers who are crowded there without electricity “or water, nor food,” its director, Doctor Mohammed Abou Salmiya, told AFP. According to the UN, 2,300 people are currently inside this hospital.
The Israeli army, whose tanks are still surrounding the hospital, told AFP that it was continuing to search the immense complex housing, according to it, a Hamas den installed in particular in a network of tunnels, which the demented Islamist movement.
Since Hamas carried out an attack of unprecedented scale on Israeli soil on October 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping around 240 people with other armed groups, according to Israeli authorities, the bombings of retaliations on the Gaza Strip are incessant. According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, at least 12,000 Palestinian civilians were killed, including 5,000 children.
Israel has vowed to “annihilate” Hamas. In parallel with its bombings, the Israeli army has been carrying out ground operations since October 27, concentrated mainly in the north of the territory, in the city of Gaza transformed into a field of ruins and around hospitals, accusing Hamas of using them. as bases and to use the sick as “human shields”.
The territory has been placed under “complete siege” since October 9 by Israel, which has cut off deliveries of food, water, electricity and medicine. According to Hamas, 24 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals have stopped functioning.
Overflowing sewers
According to the UN, more than two-thirds of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced by the war. Most fled south with the minimum they had and are surviving in the cold that sets in.
According to Unrwa, 70% of the population does not have access to drinking water in the south of the territory, where sewage has started to flow into the streets.
On Friday in Rafah, injured children were waiting in ambulances to be evacuated to the United Arab Emirates via Egypt, according to AFP images.
“At first we were told she was going to die. She has fractures to her skull, pelvis and thigh,” says Adam al-Madhoun, the father of Kenza, a four-year-old girl who had her right hand amputated. after an Israeli strike on the Jabaliya refugee camp.
In the center of the Gaza Strip, Azhar al-Rifi, a 36-year-old mother, is still seeking the security that Israel promised by ordering Palestinians to flee the north of the territory.
“They said the south was safer, so we moved,” she told AFP. But at dawn on Friday, an Israeli plane dropped several bombs on the Nusseirat refugee camp, in the center of the territory, killing 18 people, including seven close to Azhar al-Rifi.
At eight years old, Nada Abou Hiya is also on her third bombing. “First they bombed my grandfather’s house where we lived in Gaza, then we went to Deir el-Balah, they bombed us. So we came here and they bombed us again,” said -she to AFP.