By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber
GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization (WHO) praised staff at Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital on Tuesday for doing “everything they can” to care for patients despite being surrounded by Israeli forces trying to wipe out Hamas.
The hospital has ceased functioning normally since Israel began its offensive in Gaza following the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel in Oct. 7, and has insufficient electricity, water and basic equipment.
Israel says the hospital sits on top of an underground headquarters for Hamas fighters. The militant group denies this.
“We know there’s not enough food, that the staff are struggling to get any clean water because their water tanks were destroyed, but they are still doing everything they can to keep providing medical care for the desperately ill patients they have,” WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said in Geneva.
“We actually still describe Al Shifa as a functioning hospital because of the heroic efforts the staff are making.”
Harris said Al Shifa now had 700 patients, more than 400 health staff and around 3,000 internally displaced people. She said 20 inpatient deaths had been reported in the last 48 hours although the situation could be much worse.
“Everyone in that hospital is in a really, really dire situation,” she said. “We, as the world, have to find a way to help them. The best way would be to stop the hostilities right now. Focus on saving lives, not taking lives.”
People in the hospital are planning to start burying bodies within the facility’s compound, two sources at the hospital said, because of an acute sanitary crisis.
“Somehow the understanding that a hospital must be a safe haven, a place where people come to be cured, to be treated when they are in trouble, when they are in need, it has been forgotten,” Harris said.
“There seems to be a trend to want to turn them into places of death, despair and danger, which should never happen.”
Israel said Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,200 people and took about 240 back to Gaza as hostages in the Oct. 7 rampage. Medical officials in Hamas-run Gaza say over 11,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since then.
Israel, which rules out a ceasefire which it says could enable Hamas to regroup, denies Al Shifa is under siege and says its forces allow routes for those inside to exit.
Medics and officials inside the hospital say this is not true and those trying to leave have come under fire. Reuters could not verify the situation independently.
(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Timothy Heritage)
