Smoke rises as displaced Palestinians take shelter at Al Shifa hospital, amid the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel, in Gaza City, November 8, 2023.
Doaa Rouqa/Reuters
The head of Gaza’s last pediatric hospital says it has been surrounded by tanks.Four major hospitals in Gaza are now effectively on the front line of fighting, the BBC reported.Israel says that Hamas operates from tunnels under Gaza’s biggest hospital, which Hamas denies.
Israeli tanks have surrounded at least one hospital in Gaza amid reports of several healthcare facilities facing bombardment and thousands of patients being endangered, reports say.
Mustafa al-Kahlout, who heads the Al Nasr hospital and Al-Rantisi pediatric hospital in northern Gaza, told CNN: “We are completely surrounded, there are tanks outside the hospital, and we cannot leave.”
A video verified by the BBC showed a woman describing the Al-Rantisi Hospital being “besieged” by tanks.
At least four major hospitals in Gaza are now effectively on the front line of fighting, witnesses told the BBC on Friday, with reports of explosions inside or near them.
International organizations have warned of crises at several major hospitals in the enclave, including Al-Shifa, the biggest hospital in Gaza City, as multiple hospitals report running out of power and supplies.
The director of Al-Shifa, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, told Al Jazeera: “Patients are dying by the minute, victims and wounded are also dying — even babies in the incubators.”
He said that Israeli snipers were attacking anyone moving within the hospital compound and that a mortar shell had hit the intensive care unit.
“One member of a medical crew who tried to reach the incubator to lend a helping hand to the babies born inside was shot and killed,” he said. “We lost a baby in the incubator. We also lost a young man in the intensive care unit.”
Officials have said that Al-Shifa is also surrounded by Israeli tanks, per British newspaper The Telegraph.
Israel has confirmed it is operating close to Al-Shifa and has repeatedly accused Hamas of operating from tunnels underneath the facility.
The fact that Hamas HQ is located under Shifa has been Gaza’s biggest open secret for over a decade. It is a military target shielded by a medical unit. That is a war crime.
Bookmark this tweet for after the war. You’re going to look very silly. https://t.co/fEa1itTpXh
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) November 10, 2023
Hamas denies using the hospital as a cover and has asked the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to send missions to Shifa to investigate, per Reuters.
A World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson said on Friday that Al-Shifa was “coming under bombardment,” and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said their staff at the hospital had reported a “catastrophic situation.”
The deputy health minister in Gaza, Monir al-Bashr, told Al Jazeera from inside the hospital that people were digging with their hands to bury bodies within the hospital compound.
Along with medical staff and patients, up to 50,000 displaced people have been sheltering in the large hospital, the WHO said.
The WHO spokesperson said 20 hospitals in the enclave were now “out of action.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said that Palestinian armed groups using civilians to shield themselves from attack is in contravention of the laws of war.
However, “such conduct by Palestinian armed groups does not absolve Israel of its obligation to ensure that civilians are spared,” he said.
Israel has been carrying out a ground invasion of Gaza and an intense campaign of aerial bombardment following the Hamas terror attacks on October 7 that killed about 1,200 people.
Israel’s campaign has killed over 11,000 people, including over 4,00 children, the Hamas-run health ministry said on Friday.