All hospitals in Gaza province, in the north of the Gaza Strip, have stopped working, the Palestinian enclave’s deputy health minister, Youssef Abou Rich, told the AFP news agency on Monday.
Since Friday, the siege by Israeli forces around hospitals has increased, especially in the city of Gaza, the center of the fighting. The Israeli military claims that hospitals in the Gaza Strip are being used by Hamas to attack Israel.
Hospitals are now deprived of electricity due to the lack of fuel needed to run generators, the shortage of which is due to the siege imposed by Israel.
Six premature babies and nine patients in intensive care died due to a lack of electricity at Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas government’s deputy health minister also announced on Monday.
According to the daily report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the latest attacks caused damage to the cardiovascular care unit and maternity ward, among other hospital facilities in Gaza City, the capital of the Gaza Strip.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that it has lost contact with Al-Shifa, while another hospital in the Gaza capital, Al-Quds, is no longer functioning due to a lack of fuel.
On October 7, Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on Israeli territory, killing more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and more than 200 hostages it is holding captive in the Gaza Strip.
Israel then began strong retaliation against that poor Palestinian enclave, controlled by Hamas since 2007, with cuts to supplies of food, water, electricity and fuel and daily bombardments, followed by a ground offensive that completed the siege on Thursday. Gaza.
This conflict caused at least 11,000 deaths in the Gaza Strip and 1,400 in Israel.
Source: DN
