A doctor inside Gaza's largest hospital says hundreds of patients are stranded, most operations suspended
Bombs and gunfire erupting around Al-Shifa Hospital, doctor tells CBC News
Automatic gunfire and explosions have been ringing out around the sprawling Al-Shifa Hospital complex, the largest in the Gaza Strip, where the Hamas-run Health Ministry said one baby in an incubator died when the hospital lost power on Saturday and another woman was killed by a shell.
Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, the head of the hospital's plastic surgery department, told CBC News that most operations have been suspended after fuel ran out. The hospital has no electricity or internet connection, he added.
"Moving within the hospital is unsafe, moving around the hospital is unsafe," Mokhallalati said on Saturday morning through several phone calls that were frequently dropped because of poor communication lines.
"I think [the Israeli forces] are getting closer and closer to the hospital," he said, amid the sounds of loud blasts and gunshots. Attempts to reach Mokhallalati on Saturday afternoon were unsuccessful.
Israeli officials deny targeting the hospital. "The news reported by some media about a siege or targeting of Al-Shifa Hospital is false," Col. Moshe Tetro, commander of Israel's liaison directorate with Gaza, said in a statement on Saturday.
"The clashes with Hamas terrorists take place in the vicinity of the hospital area, and there is no siege or targeting of the hospital.... We are in constant contact with the hospital director and are ready to co-ordinate the exit of everyone who wants to leave the hospital towards Salah al-Din Street."
In a televised address on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against growing international calls for a ceasefire. He said Israel's battle to crush Gaza's ruling Hamas militants would continue with "full force" unless they release all of the estimated 240 hostages taken in the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Israel says Hamas bases in hospital
The Israeli military has said that Hamas militants who rampaged through southern Israel last month have placed command centres under Al-Shifa Hospital and others in Gaza, making them vulnerable to being considered military targets.
In a briefing on Saturday, a spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) told journalists that Hamas fighters were seen in the windows of the Al-Rantisi children's hospital earlier this week. The IDF said it did not attack the militants and left the hospital because there were too many civilians around.
Hamas has denied using civilians as human shields. Mokhallalati said there was no one inside Al-Shifa with weapons.
When asked by CBC News if Hamas is operating underneath the hospital, he said there are tunnels that run underneath the whole territory.
The doctor said fierce fighting between members of the "resistance" and Israeli forces is taking place around the vicinity, making it impossible for anyone to leave the hospital.
Mokhallalati said about 500 patients remain at the facility, including dozens on ventilators.
"The Israeli side talked to the director of the hospital yesterday and they asked him to evacuate," he said.
"He told them clearly, 'You have attacked all the hospitals around us, where am I going to evacuate the patients?'"
The Israeli military later said it will help evacuate babies trapped in the hospital on Sunday.
"The staff of the Shifa hospital has requested that tomorrow we help the babies in the pediatric department to get to a safer hospital. We will provide the assistance needed," Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari told reporters on Saturday.
A perilous journey south
Mokhallalati estimates that 80 per cent of the Gazans who had been sheltering at the hospital left over the past few days, moving along humanitarian corridors that Israel has opened up.
Thousands more people in northern Gaza are scrambling to get to a place of greater safety as intense fighting rages between Israel and Hamas. Civilians are streaming out of the northern part of the territory, making the journey south however they can — including many on foot, travelling with family in tow.
There are clear dangers for people staying put in northern Gaza, but they also face risks in travelling south — not only during the journey itself, but also in finding shelter and staying out of harm's way once they get to their destination.
Gaza's border authority announced on Saturday that the Rafah land crossing into Egypt would reopen on Sunday for foreign passport holders.
Evacuations from the Gaza Strip into Egypt for foreign citizens and Palestinians needing urgent medical treatment were suspended on Friday, three Egyptian security sources and a Palestinian official said.
Conflict erupted in Gaza in the wake of a surprise attack Hamas launched across parts of southern Israel on Oct. 7, five weeks ago. In response, Israel declared war and unleashed a campaign involving airstrikes and a ground offensive, with the goal of dismantling the Islamist militant group and its infrastructure.
The resulting death toll has been immense, with thousands of civilians killed and at least two-thirds of Gaza's 2.3 million people internally displaced within the besieged enclave.
As of Friday, officials from the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said more than 11,000 people have died in the territory since Oct. 7.
In Israel, the Foreign Affairs Ministry revised the Israeli government's figure that some 1,400 people had been killed — Canadians among them — and now says the number stands at about 1,200.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from Reuters, The Associated Press