At Gaza hospital, patients trapped in ‘circle of death’
UN warns fuel shortage to halt aid work in ‘48 hours’
The latest toll included 27 adult intensive care patients and seven babies, deputy health minister in the besieged strip, Youssef Abu Rish, told AFP.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned Monday its operations in war-torn Gaza would shut down within two days due to fuel shortages.
“The humanitarian operation in Gaza will grind to a halt in the next 48 hours as no fuel is allowed to enter Gaza,” UNRWA’s Gaza chief Thomas White wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Battles around hospitals have forced thousands of Palestinians to flee from some of the last shelters in northern Gaza while stranding critically wounded patients, including newborns, and their caregivers with dwindling supplies and no electricity, health officials said
Monday.
At least 650 patients were still inside, desperate to be evacuated to another medical facility by the Red Cross or some other neutral agency. Israel claims the hospital sits atop tunnels housing a headquarters for Hamas fighters, who are to blame for its plight for using patients as shields, which both Hamas and the hospital staff at Shifa deny.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Shifa “is not functioning as a hospital anymore.”
Another hospital in Gaza City, Quds hospital, was forced to shut down Sunday because it ran out of fuel. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which operates the facility, said Israeli forces are stationed nearby and that preparations are being made to evacuate some 6,000 patients, medics and displaced people.
It said that an attempt to reach the hospital from Khan Younis in order to evacuate patients has been abandoned due to “continuing shelling and shooting”. A convoy accompanied by the International Committee of the Red Cross was forced to return due to the dangerous conditions.
Both sides have seized on the plight of hospitals, particularly Shifa’s, as a symbol of the larger war, now in its sixth week.
The fighting was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented Oct. 7 surprise attack into Israel, and Israel’s response has brought unseen levels of death and destruction to Gaza.
“The tanks are in front of the hospital. We are under full blockade. It’s a totally civilian area. Only hospital facility, hospital patients, doctors and other civilians staying in the hospital. Someone should stop this,” a surgeon at the hospital, Dr. Ahmed El Mokhallalati, said by telephone.
“They bombed the (water) tanks, they bombed the water wells, they bombed the oxygen pump as well. They bombed everything in the hospital. So, we are hardly surviving. We tell everyone, the hospital is no more a safe place for treating patients. We are harming patients by keeping them here.”
War at risk of spreading
There was also fresh concern that the war could spread beyond Gaza, with an upsurge of clashes on the border with Lebanon, and the United States launching air strikes on military targets in neighboring Syria.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Saturday warned the Hezbollah resistance movement that launching a war would result in widespread destruction in Lebanon similar to that in Gaza.
“If it (Hezbollah) makes this kind of mistake here, the ones who will pay the price will be first and foremost Lebanese citizens,” Gallant told soldiers on the northern border in remarks relayed by his office.
“What we’re doing in Gaza, we can also do in Beirut.”
UNRWA building targeted
The IDF issued an update on its military operation in Gaza, saying its forces have conducted 4,300 strikes to date. It claims to have struck “approximately 300 tunnel shafts”.
The UN’s refugee mission in Palestine has reported that one of its buildings in Rafah has been struck by Israel’s Navy. Rafah is in the south of the Gaza Strip, within the area that Israel has insisted that Palestinians move to. In a statement, UNRWA said there were no casualties. It added that UN buildings and facilities within Gaza currently host nearly 780,000 displaced people, saying “they should be protected at all times”.
Largest toll of UN staff
United Nations workers observed a minute’s silence on Monday to honor the more than 100 employees killed in Gaza since the war began last month, the largest toll of humanitarian workers in the organization’s 78-year history.
Staff at UN offices in Geneva bowed their heads as a candle was lit in memory of the 101 employees of UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza. UN flags across the world flew at half-mast.
“This is the highest number of aid workers killed in the history of our organisation in such a short time,” said Tatiana Valovaya, Director-General of the UN office in Geneva.
“We are gathered here today, united in this very symbolic location, to pay respect to our brave colleagues who sacrificed their lives while serving under the United Nations flag.”
EU calls for ‘humanitarian pauses’
Meanwhile, the 27 EU member states have called for “immediate humanitarian pauses” to allow humanitarian aid to get in to Gaza, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs Josep Borrell said. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Monday called on the union and the United Nations to “parachute aid” into the Gaza Strip.
“I call on the United Nations and the European Union to parachute aid into the Gaza Strip, especially the north,” he said, referring to the area where fighting is most intense.
Also, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has said it was vital to keep “hope alive” in the “unbelievable situation where so many people are currently losing hope” in Gaza.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said the world must “distinguish between Hamas and Palestinian citizens” and mourn all civilian deaths, as he defended his government’s response to the escalating crisis in Gaza.
Joko Widodo, the president of Indonesia, home to the world’s biggest Muslim population, called for a cease-fire ahead of meeting US President Joe Biden in Washington on Monday.
AP, AFP, Reuters, and the Guardian contributed to this report.