The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it had carried out a mission to the Al Shifa hospital, the target of attacks by the Israeli army, and is promoting a plan to evacuate the establishment that it described as a “death zone.”
According to the WHO, whose experts spent an hour in the immense hospital complex, the building still housed 25 employees and 291 patients, including 32 babies in critical condition, 22 patients on dialysis and two in intensive care.
Members of the mission described the hospital as a “death zone” where the situation is “desperate,” the WHO said in a statement released Saturday night.
“WHO and its partners are urgently developing plans for the immediate evacuation of remaining patients, staff and their families,” the organization added.
“The team found a hospital that was no longer in a condition to function: without water, without electricity, without food and with medical supplies exhausted,” wrote WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom on the social network X (formerly Twitter). Ghebreyesus. .
“Considering the deplorable situation and the condition of numerous patients, including babies, the hospital staff asked for help in evacuating patients who can no longer receive life-saving care there,” he added.
In its statement, the WHO states that the vast majority of patients who remain in hospital are victims of complex fractures and amputations, burns, chest and abdominal trauma.
He also said that 29 patients suffer from serious spinal injuries and cannot move without medical assistance. Many wounded suffer serious infections due to lack of antibiotics and poor hygiene conditions.
The WHO announced that several missions will be organized in the coming days for the urgent evacuation of the remaining patients to the Nasser hospital and the European hospital in Gaza, although these two facilities “already exceed their capacities.”
According to the Israeli army, which carried out a raid on Al Shifa hospital on Wednesday morning, this building houses a Hamas compound, which will be installed in a network of tunnels, an accusation denied by the Palestinian Islamist movement.
In recent days it has surrounded the site and carried out several limited raids on its facilities, in which it claims to have discovered weapons and a tunnel used by Hamas.
The Gaza Strip has been under a complete siege by Israel since October 9, with the population deprived of water, electricity, food and medicine.
A part of this population took refuge in the south, near the border with Egypt, but hundreds of thousands remain in the midst of the fighting, in the north of the enclave. According to several non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the situation is disastrous for the population.
In the Gaza Strip, where Israel seeks to “annihilate” Hamas, Israeli bombings in retaliation for the October 7 attack have already caused the death of more than 12,000 people, mostly civilians, including some 5,000 children, according to the Hamas Ministry. Health.
According to Israeli authorities, about 1,200 people were killed in Israel in the Hamas attack on October 7, including about 300 military and police officers.
Source: TSF
