Another 200,000 people have fled northern Gaza since November 5, the UN humanitarian office said Tuesday, as Israeli ground forces battle Palestinian militants around hospitals where patients, newborns and medics are stranded with no electricity and dwindling supplies.
The humanitarian office, known as OCHA, says only one hospital in the north is capable of receiving patients. All the others are no longer able to function and mostly serve as shelters from the fighting, including Gaza’s largest, Shifa, which is surrounded by Israeli troops and where 36 babies are at risk of dying because there is no power for incubators.
The war, now in its sixth week, was triggered by Hamas’ surprise attack into Israel, in which militants massacred hundreds of civilians and dragged some 240 hostages back to Gaza. Israel launched heavy airstrikes for nearly three weeks before sending troops and tanks into the north. The war has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians and wreaked widespread destruction on the impoverished enclave.
Israel has urged civilians to evacuate Gaza City and surrounding areas in the north, but the southern part of the besieged territory is not much safer. Israel carries out frequent airstrikes from north to south, hitting what it says are militant targets but often killing women and children.
UN-run shelters in the south are severely overcrowded, with an average of one toilet for 160 people. In all, some 1.5 million Palestinians, more than two thirds of Gaza’s population, have fled their homes.
People stand in line for hours for scarce bread and brackish water. Trash is piling up, sewage is flooding the streets and taps run dry because there is no fuel for water pumps or treatment plants. Israel has barred fuel imports since the start of the war, saying Hamas would use it for military purposes.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which is struggling to provide basic services to over 600,000 people sheltering in schools and other facilities in the south, said it may run out of fuel by Wednesday, forcing it to halt most aid operations. It said it was unable to continue importing limited supplies of food and medicine through Egypt’s Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only link to the outside world.
With Israeli forces fighting Palestinian militants in the centre of Gaza City, the territory’s main city, both sides have seized on the plight of hospitals. Images of doctors trying to keep newborns warm at Shifa have circulated widely.
Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals as cover for its fighters, alleging that Hamas has set up its main command centre in and beneath Shifa, without providing visual evidence. Both Hamas and Shifa Hospital staff deny the Israeli allegations.
On Monday, the military released footage of a children’s hospital that its forces entered over the weekend, showing weapons it said it found inside, as well as rooms in the basement where it believes the militants were holding hostages. The video showed what appeared to be a hastily installed toilet and ventilation system, as well as a motorcycle with a bullet hole in it, in the basement.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza rejected the allegations, saying the basement shown was part of the hospital and had been turned into a shelter for displaced people.
“The hospital was forcefully evacuated at gunpoint ... Why didn’t they detain any of the alleged resistance or alleged hostages?” the statement said. It denied the facility was related to a tunnel that Israeli forces uncovered nearby.
Meanwhile, gunfire and explosions raged Monday around Shifa, which Israeli troops encircled over the weekend. Tens of thousands of people have fled the hospital in the past few days and headed to the southern Gaza Strip, including large numbers of displaced people who had taken shelter there.
For weeks, Shifa staff members running low on supplies have performed surgery on war-wounded patients, including children, without anaesthesia and using vinegar as antiseptic.