Premature babies at Gaza’s largest hospital are being wrapped in foil and placed next to hot water in a desperate bid to keep them alive in “catastrophic” conditions.
The hospital Director has warned, as Israeli firepower pounds surrounding streets and remaining fuel reserves dry up, leaving the facility unable to function.
Staff at the Al-Shifa hospital were fighting to keep the newborns alive and warm after oxygen supplies ran out and they had to move the babies by hand from the neonatal unit’s incubators to a different part of the hospital. Meanwhile, a reporter for the Al Arabiya network who was inside the hospital told AFP that people were trapped there, too scared to flee due to the heavy fighting.
The Director of the Medical Center, DR. MUHAMMED ABU SALMIYA on Monday said there is no more water, food, milk for children and babies and described the situation in the hospital as catastrophic.
Images show several newborn babies who were taken from incubators at the hospital placed together in one bed.
The doctor on Sunday told Al Araby TV that several children had died in the intensive care unit and the nursery over the past two days amid Israel’s unrelenting bombardment and blockade of Gaza, an already impoverished and densely packed territory, following the October 7 attack on its territory by Hamas militants.
An Israeli military spokesperson on Saturday said its forces were engaged in “ongoing intense fighting against Hamas in the vicinity of the hospital complex, but denied firing at the northern Gaza medical center and rejected suggestions the hospital is under siege.
Israel has repeatedly claimed there is a Hamas command center underneath Al-Shifa hospital, which Hamas and hospital officials have denied.
The Israeli military has also previously accused Hamas of embedding itself in civilian infrastructure.