Patients die in hospital under Israeli siege

The Gaza health ministry says five patients in the intensive care unit have died after the Israeli military attack triggered power outages that have led to a lack of oxygen, sparking fears for the lives of hundreds of other patients.

There are growing concerns that other patients in the intensive care unit and in the pediatric ward may lose their lives at any moment due to the depletion of oxygen supply.

Pregnant women gave birth on Friday with “no water, no food and no way of warming them up in cold weather” the ministry said.

The Israeli military stormed the hospital on Thursday, opening fire on its medical departments and ordering some of the injured to evacuate at gunpoint. Hospital staff, including doctors as well as patients and those sheltering at the hospital, have been detained.

The regime’s Western backers have kept silent over the latest Israeli assault on Gaza’s hospitals. Attacking a hospital is a war crime.

Israeli forces were still searching the hospital premises by Saturday after claiming that Hamas fighters were hiding in the medical facility. Photos show patients and doctors, who have been left helpless amid the chaos, in a state of shock.

The Israeli military said its troops have detained more than 100 people while interrogating dozens of others.

Hamas has denied that any of its fighters were present in the hospital, describing the Israeli allegations as “lies aimed to cover up for destroying hospitals”.

According to the ministry, Israeli troops prevented an aid convoy outside the hospital from delivering critically needed medical supplies.

A spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO) said, “There are still critically injured and sick patients that are inside the hospital.”

The WHO says its staff were trying to reach the hospital after the Israeli raid warning “there is an urgent need to deliver fuel to ensure the continuation of the provision of life-saving service.”

On Saturday, Al Jazeera also reported that Israeli military tanks and bulldozers were blocking medicine delivered by the WHO from reaching the hundreds of patients who remain stuck at Nasser hospital.

The news outlet said that two WHO trucks carrying much-needed medical supplies and fuel for generators to provide electricity have been prevented from delivering the aid despite being about 50 meters outside the hospital’s main gate.

According to the New York Times, citing an Israeli official, “who spoke on the condition of anonymity”, the regime’s goals of the raid on the hospital “were to check intelligence that the bodies of two captives were there, to arrest or kill Hamas militants, and to detain the family members of senior Hamas officials.”

Tel Aviv has failed to present evidence to the public that any of these goals have been accomplished.

Reports from journalists on the ground in Gaza say Israeli forces used police dogs against patients and have forcibly displaced Palestinians inside the medical complex. With nowhere to seek shelter, the Palestinians were then detained at a checkpoint as they tried to evacuate.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says the Israeli attack on the hospital has forced its medical staff to flee.

The medical center had already been a target for Israeli strikes, rendering it barely operational, much like the rest of the hospitals in Gaza, according to MSF.

Christopher Lockyear, secretary-general of the medical charity, said, “The situation was chaotic, catastrophic.” He has urged the international community to intervene, saying that after the Israeli raid, the entire medical staff was forced to flee and that the organization has no news about their fate.
MSF has already lost five of its medical members in Gaza since the beginning of the regime’s war on Gaza.

The enclave’s health system has effectively collapsed after the Israeli military repeatedly bombed and raided the Palestinian medical facilities, resulting in a lack of medical equipment and medicine.

Surgeons have been forced to make very difficult decisions over which patients to operate on and which ones to leave behind.

The number of injured civilians from the daily Israeli bombing of residential areas has added further strain to an already dire humanitarian crisis that has seen doctors perform operations without anesthesia.

Raphael Pitti, who spent two weeks working at the European Hospital in Khan Younis until February 6, with the medical charity UOSSM said, “We lack painkillers such as morphine and sedatives.”

Pitti told AFP, “We have no other choice but to let the most seriously injured die without being able to make them comfortable because otherwise, they will take up personnel, resources, beds, medicines.”

The violent assault on the Nasser hospital follows a similar pattern at other medical centers, which the Israeli military has raided across the Gaza Strip since October 7, in what experts say is an attempt by the regime to pile pressure on Hamas and gain concessions during any indirect negotiations between the two sides.