People sit in a bus as patients from Gaza who have been receiving treatment at Makassed Hospital wait to be transported to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, after they were refused permission to stay, in East Jerusalem, on November 13, 2023. | Photo Credit: Reuters
Thousand Palestinians forced to flee from Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, as Israeli forces reach the gates of the medical facility on Monday. But hundreds of patients and others displaced by the war remained inside, said health officials.
World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said a day earlier that the UN agency was in contact with Shifa hospital, which he said had been without electricity and water for three days, and noted that gunfire and bombings outside the compound “have exacerbated the already critical circumstances.” “Regrettably, the hospital is not functioning as a hospital anymore,” he said in a post on X.
More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes since the war began.
Youssef Abu Rish, deputy health minister in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, told AFP the new deaths brought the toll to six premature babies and nine patients since electric shortages began affecting the hospital a number of days ago.
More than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. About 2,700 people have been reported missing.
- NOVEMBER 14, 2023 05:20Israeli army confirms identity of hostage soldierThe Israeli army confirmed Tuesday the identity of a soldier held hostage by Hamas, after the publication by the armed wing of the Palestinian group showed the young woman in captivity.The army wrote in a statement that “our hearts go out to the Marciano family, whose daughter, Noa, was brutally kidnapped by the Hamas terrorist organisation”, officially confirming a hostage’s identity for the first time, after Hamas gunmen abducted about 240 people when they stormed across the militarised border from Gaza on October 7.
