<div dir="ltr">
<table cellpadding="0" class="gmail-cf gmail-An" id="gmail-undefined"><tbody><tr><td class="gmail-Ap"><div id="gmail-:t8" class="gmail-Ar gmail-Au gmail-Ao" style="display:block"><div id="gmail-:n6" class="gmail-Am gmail-Al editable gmail-LW-avf gmail-tS-tW gmail-tS-tY" aria-label="Message Body" role="textbox" aria-multiline="true" style="direction:ltr;min-height:172px" tabindex="1" aria-controls=":1bx" aria-expanded="false">
<div class="gmail-top-anchor"></div>
<div id="gmail-toolbar" class="gmail-toolbar-container">
</div><div class="gmail-container" lang="en" dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/babies-die-patients-shot-israel-besieges-hospitals-gazas-north">electronicintifada.net</a>
<div class="gmail-domain-border"></div>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Babies die, patients shot as Israel besieges hospitals in Gaza's north</h1>
<p class="gmail-node__submitted">
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy">Maureen Clare Murphy</a></span> -
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">11 November 2023</span></span> </p>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<span>
<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2023-11/031123_gaza_sj_003.jpg?itok=dRKnzZna×tamp=1699735561" width="392" height="261" alt="A girl with both of her legs bandaged and one in a splint rests on a bed with a woman sitting next to her" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
</span>
<p>Injured Palestinians are treated at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on 3 November.</p><small>
<span>APA images</span></small>
<p>Israel has besieged hospitals in the northern half of the Gaza Strip since Thursday.</p>
<p>Medical facilities have been “under relentless bombardment” for the past 24 hours, Doctors Without Borders <a href="https://www.msf.org/gaza-patients-and-medical-staff-trapped-hospitals-under-fire">said</a> on Saturday.</p>
<p>The humanitarian charity added that its teams and patients were still
inside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the largest medical facility in
the territory, where more than 11,000 people had been killed since 7
October as of Friday.</p>
<p>The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza was unable to publish updated
casualty figures on Saturday “as Israeli forces are besieging hospitals
and cut telecommunications,” Defense for Children
International-Palestine <a href="https://twitter.com/DCIPalestine/status/1723369830647001574">said</a>.</p>
<p>Doctors Without Borders reported that al-Shifa lost electrical power
on Friday and that “ambulances can no longer move to collect the
injured, and nonstop bombardment prevents patients and staff from
evacuating.”</p>
<p>Staff were “witnessing people being shot as they <span class="gmail-Lm gmail-ng">attempt</span>[ed] to flee the hospital,” according to the charity.</p>
<p>Mohammed Obeid, a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders at al-Shifa
hospital, said that sniper fire targeted four patients inside the
facility, hitting a quadriplegic patient in the neck and another patient
in the abdomen:
</p>
He said that two neonatal patients died because the incubators are not
working due to lack of electricity and an adult patient died after his
ventilator shut down.
<p>Obeid asked for a guarantee that al-Shifa’s 600 inpatients could be evacuated safely.</p>
<h2>Hospital staff “shot and wounded”</h2>
<p>The UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians <a href="https://www.map.org.uk/news/archive/post/1533-israelas-war-on-hospitals-must-end">said</a>
on Saturday that al-Shifa’s intensive care unit had been bombed and
damaged and that “staff moving between buildings have been shot at and
critically wounded.”</p>
<p>The group added that people injured while attempting to flee “lie dead or wounded in the street as rescue is impossible.”</p>
<p>“With the mortuary shut down, a hundred bodies are piled up and cannot be buried,” Medical Aid for Palestinians said.</p>
<p>Doctors had to hand ventilate critically ill patients as the facility’s emergency power generators shut down.</p>
<p>Israel cut electricity to the territory a month ago as a form of
collective punishment prohibited under international law and has refused
to allow the transfer of urgently needed fuel to Gaza.</p>
<p>Medical Aid for Palestinians said that more neonatal patients “will die soon unless the power supply is restored.”</p>
<p>The charity added that it had been warning for weeks of the
“catastrophic consequences if world leaders fail to protect healthcare
in Gaza.”</p>
<p>“Our worst fears are coming true,” the group said.</p>
<h2>“No justification”</h2>
<p>Martin Griffiths, the UN’s humanitarian chief, <a href="https://twitter.com/UNReliefChief/status/1723378681651909067">said</a>
on Saturday that “there can be no justification for acts of war in
healthcare facilities, leaving them with no power, food or water, and
shooting at patients and civilians trying to flee,” but did not
specifically name Israel in his statement.</p>
<p>“This is unconscionable, reprehensible and must stop,” Griffiths added.</p>
<p>Robert Mardini, the director of the International Committee of the
Red Cross, used uncharacteristically strong language on Saturday.</p>
<p>He said the humanitarian organization was “shocked and appalled by
the images and reports coming from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.”</p>
<p>“Hospitals, patients, staff and health care must be protected,” Mardini added.
</p>
Both the US and the UN have helped give Israel the green light for its attacks on hospitals in Gaza’s north.
<p>White House spokesperson John Kirby earlier this week confirmed that
the Biden administration has not drawn any red lines for Israel in its
purported war on Hamas that has killed thousands of Palestinian
civilians:
</p>
The Biden State Department also <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/updates#node-40371">refuses to confirm</a>
whether the US recognizes that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to
Gaza and the West Bank, and won’t say what legal framework it believes
applies.
<p>During a press briefing on 9 November, reporter Sam Husseini said
“it’s a free fire zone if you’re not going to abide by the Fourth Geneva
Convention.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, António Guterres, the UN secretary general, has <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/why-un-refusing-call-israel-killer">parroted Israeli government propaganda</a> by calling for “the end of the use of civilians as human shields.”</p>
<p>Guterres gave Israel a pretext to deliberately target civilians and
civilian objects by blurring the distinction between civilian and
military targets. By doing so, the head of the UN endangered the lives
of patients, their family members, medical staff and displaced people.</p>
<p>Israel has repeatedly claimed, without providing credible evidence,
that Hamas uses al-Shifa hospital as a command center. Hamas vehemently
denies the accusation and has invited Guterres to form an international
delegation to visit hospitals in Gaza and refute what it said was
Israel’s “lies and blatant fabrications” to justify targeting civilians.</p>
<h2>“A collective death sentence”</h2>
<p>“Feel for us, we are also human beings,” pleaded Muhammad Rayhan, an
injured man being treated at al-Shifa hospital, in footage published by
Al Jazeera English on Saturday.
</p>
Hanan Fayyad, a woman at the hospital, said that her daughter had been
paralyzed in an Israeli strike while she was waiting in a queue to buy
bread.
<p>Muhammad Abu Salamiya, the director of al-Shifa, said medical staff
cannot evacuate “as there are more than 60 patients in the intensive
care unit, more than 50 children in the neonatal and pediatric
departments, and more than 500 patients in the dialysis departments.”</p>
<p>Physicians for Human Rights-Israel <a href="https://twitter.com/PHRIsrael/status/1723342207657156877">said</a>
that with no electricity, water and oxygen, and injured patients left
behind at al-Shifa hospital “with no treatment or means of escape,” the
situation is <a href="https://twitter.com/PHRIsrael/status/1723342551178977627">no longer</a> a “humanitarian catastrophe – it is a collective death sentence.”</p>
<p>Late Friday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs <a href="https://ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-35">said</a>
that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remaining in the northern
half of Gaza “are struggling to survive” as both safe drinking water and
food are scarce.</p>
<p>Now al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City is the only semi-functioning
facility able to serve the medical needs of people in Gaza’s north,
British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta said on Saturday.
</p>
Abu Sitta said that Israel was targeting schools near al-Ahli, where the
hospital grounds had been turned into a makeshift field hospital amid
nearby gun battles, tank fire, small arms and machine gun fire.
<p>Abu Sitta <a href="https://twitter.com/GhassanAbuSitt1/status/1723085787774779433">said</a> on Friday that doctors were seeing “multiple cases of acute malnutrition and dehydration in young children.”</p>
<p>He <a href="https://twitter.com/GhassanAbuSitt1/status/1723085439349772457">added</a>
that with the collapse of all four pediatric hospitals in Gaza,
“children with chronic illnesses do not have access to specialist
medical care.”</p>
<p>“We have had children with diabetes, asthma and autoimmune disease
seek medical care at the ER” at al-Ahli hospital, Abu Sitta said.</p>
<h2>Ambulances out of fuel</h2>
<p>The Palestine Red Crescent Society <a href="https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1723337562360598937">reported</a>
on Saturday that Israeli tanks were 20 meters away from Al-Quds
Hospital in Gaza City. There was “direct shooting at the hospital,
creating a state of extreme panic and fear among 14,000 displaced
people,” PRCS said.</p>
<p>The humanitarian group <a href="https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1723399703725748242">added</a>
that only seven out of its 18 ambulances in the northern half of Gaza
are currently operational and will be grounded in the coming hours when
they run out of fuel.</p>
<p>“Our teams are witnessing numerous casualties and wounded
individuals, yet they face challenges reaching them due to Israeli
military targeting of ambulance vehicles approaching the affected
areas,” PRCS said.</p>
<p>Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, deputy medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/11/israel-hamas-war-gaza-palestine-live/#link-RABMZMGPRBAI5CZDYRIOQX2OAU">told <em>The Washington Post</em></a> that shelling forced medical staff to evacuate from al-Nasr pediatric hospital, leaving five babies in incubators behind.</p>
<p>The director of al-Nasr hospital <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/11/israel-hamas-war-gaza-palestine-live/#link-Y5ZYKBZCU5HEPNYVOTPDWSF4P4">told <em>The Washington Post</em></a>
that the Israeli military sent the director of al-Rantisi hospital,
another pediatric health facility, a map of an evacuation route for
hospitals, giving hospital officials five minutes warning before the
army would start surrounding the facilities.</p>
<p><a href="https://t.me/Palestine_here/5466">Video</a> posted on social
media on Friday shows people carrying white flags coming under gunfire
as they attempted to leave al-Nasr hospital.</p>
<p>As of late Friday, 20 out of 36 of Gaza’s hospitals were no longer functioning, according to the UN.</p>
<p>The head of a delegation of the International Committee of the Red
Cross in Gaza said Friday that “the destruction affecting hospitals in
Gaza is becoming unbearable and needs to stop. The lives of thousands of
civilians, patients and medical staff are at risk.”</p> <h3>
<span></span></h3>
</div></div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div></div>
</div>
</div></div></td></tr></tbody></table>
</div>