The deputy health minister of the Hamas government in Gaza stated this Sunday that an Israeli airstrike “completely destroyed” the heart disease department building of the Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip.
“The two-story building of the heart disease department was completely destroyed in an airstrike,” Youssef Abou Rich told the French news agency AFP, blaming the Israeli military for the attack.
AFP was unable to confirm the attack at the scene, but at least one witness present at the hospital confirmed the explosions and damage.
The Israeli army did not immediately react.
“There was a new attack on the surgery department and the outpatient surgery department,” added a Palestinian official, reporting “five bombs fired since the morning at the complex.”
“(Israeli) tanks are completely surrounding Al-Shifa hospital,” the Palestinian official reported, while the Israeli military called reports that its troops are “surrounding and targeting” Al-Shifa as “false.”
“They shoot at all those who try to leave the buildings of the hospital complex,” said the Deputy Minister of Health of the Hamas Government, Youssef Abou Rich.
The Israeli army confirms that it is positioned around the Al-Shifa hospital, while allowing an exit to the east, open to the thousands of displaced people housed in the hospital.
“There are two (Israeli) tanks whose weapons are pointed inside the maternity ward, at the southern entrance to the Al-Shifa complex,” Abou Rich explained. And there are another “two tanks outside the west entrance and two tanks inside this entrance.”
Around the hospital complex, “there are dozens of bodies in the streets, hundreds of wounded,” reported the deputy health minister of the Hamas government.
The Hamas government’s Health Ministry stopped publishing the daily death toll since Friday, saying it can no longer contact all hospitals and cannot send its ambulances because of the violence of the fighting.
In Al Shifa there are “650 patients, about 40 children in incubators, all threatened with death and 15,000 displaced,” said Abou Rich.
Since Saturday, electricity has been cut off in Al Shifa and dozens of babies in incubators and patients in intensive care are now at risk of death, according to several international NGOs.
“The nurses perform manual respiratory massages on these premature babies,” added Abou Rich, stating that he fears the death of several of them in a few hours.
The World Health Organization warned Sunday that it has lost communication with Al-Shifa hospital and says there are reports that some people who fled the hospital were shot, injured and even killed.
After 36 days of war, which began on October 7 with the Hamas attack on Israeli territory, in which more than 1,400 people were killed and more than 240 were kidnapped in villages near Gaza, Israeli bombings have killed more than 11,000 people and have injured around 27,500. according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, controlled by the Islamist group.
Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
Source: TSF
