The Al-Shifa hospital was left without electricity due to Israeli attacks, which is causing the death of the first patients, including a premature baby, the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip announced this Saturday.
“The Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza was left without water, fuel, food, electricity and telecommunications, with thousands of people inside, including the wounded, sick and displaced,” the Gaza Ministry of Health said in a brief statement.
The general director of Gaza hospitals, Mohamad Zakut, warned, in statements to journalists, that the pediatric intensive care unit, where 39 newborns are located, has stopped functioning.
Previously, doctor Munir al-Borsh, cited by the ministry, reported the death of the first premature newborn treated in the neonatal unit.
“He died due to a complete power outage. The medical staff has been giving some of them manual artificial respiration for three consecutive hours,” the doctor noted.
According to the Ministry of Health, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, Israeli snipers installed in the buildings surrounding the complex shoot at anyone who tries to leave or move between the buildings of the complex.
The director general of Gaza hospitals stated that “the doors of the hospitals remain open,” but they cannot provide medical assistance to patients.
Mohamad Zakut stated, for his part, that due to the lack of telecommunications, doctors cannot communicate between hospitals.
“We ask the international community to put an end to these war crimes. The situation is very critical,” said the center’s general director, warning that if nothing is done, patients admitted to intensive care will die.
Hours earlier, the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) had warned that Israeli attacks on Al Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza, intensified during the night in a “dramatic” manner.
The Ministry of Health had already announced on Friday a total blackout of electricity in the Indonesian Hospital and both the medical authorities of Gaza and international organizations denounced the closure of numerous hospitals and medical centers in northern Gaza due to the Israeli military offensive.
The intensification of the Israeli offensive coincides with the holding in Saudi Arabia of an extraordinary summit of Arab and Islamic countries to reach a “unified collective position” on the war in the Gaza Strip and its “unprecedented” repercussions, in a meeting that It will be attended by the heads of state of the region.
On Friday, Israeli troops began surrounding Al-Shifa Hospital and several other major hospital centers in Gaza.
The Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry, run by Hamas’s armed wing, said on Friday that at least 20 people were killed in an Israeli attack on Al-Shifa.
More than 11,000 people were killed and nearly 27,500 injured in the Gaza Strip in the war that broke out on October 7, following a Hamas attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 kidnapped.
Source: TSF
