LAST UPDATE | 19 Nov 2023
THIRTY ONE PREMATURE babies have been evacuated from Gaza’s biggest hospital, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said, seeking to get the last patients and staff out of what it has described as a “death zone”.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organisation led a second joint-humanitarian mission to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza “under extremely intense and high risk security conditions” following the first mission yesterday.
He said that 31 “very sick” babies were moved in a joint operation with staff from the UN and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PCRS), which used six ambulances in the transfer.
The babies were taken to the Al-Helal Emirati maternity hospital, he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “They are receiving urgent care in the neonatal intensive care unit,” he added.
An AFP photographer saw the tiny infants at the hospital, some three or four to a cot, being bottle-fed by nurses and tended to by doctors in surgical scrubs.
“Further missions are being planned to urgently transport remaining patients and staff out of Al-Shifa Hospital, pending guarantees of safe passage by parties to the conflict,” said Tedros.
Alongside the babies, six health workers and 10 staff family members were also moved, he added.
.@WHO has led a second @UN and @PalestineRCS mission to Al-Shifa Hospital in #Gaza today, under extremely intense and high-risk security conditions.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) November 19, 2023
31 very sick babies were evacuated, along with 6 health workers and 10 staff family members.
6 Palestine Red Crescent ambulances… pic.twitter.com/YJc25M0vnc
The evacuation came as Israel said it was stepping up operations against Hamas militants and mediator Qatar said only “minor” obstacles remained to getting agreement on the release of hostages.
Sirens blared across Jerusalem to warn of rocket fire from Gaza, sending civilians scurrying for cover as loud blasts from intercepted missiles pierced the air.
In Gaza, a lack of fuel to power incubators has previously led to the deaths of other vulnerable newborns at Al-Shifa hospital, according to the Gaza health ministry in the territory.
Al-Shifa has become the focus of the six-week-old war that began 7 October when Gaza-based Hamas militants stormed across the militarised border to kill, according to Israeli officials, around 1,200 people and take roughly 240 hostages.
In Gaza, the Hamas government says 13,000 have now been killed in Israel’s relentless aerial bombardment and ground operations in retaliation for the worst-ever onslaught against the country.
The Hamas government said more than 5,500 children were among the dead, alongside 3,500 women, with 30,000 more people wounded.
Most of the casualties on both sides are civilians.
Israel said yesterday its military was “expanding its operational activities in additional neighbourhoods… of the Gaza Strip” where the United Nations says some 1.6 million people have been internally displaced by weeks of fighting.
Three Israeli soldiers were killed yesterday in fighting in northern Gaza, the military said, raising the number of troop deaths to 62 since the war began.
The narrow coastal territory, under a crippling blockade since Hamas took power in 2007, has been under Israeli siege since the war erupted, leaving food, water, medicine and fuel in short supply.
The fighting has rendered more than half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals non-functioning by shortages, combat or damage, the UN has said.
Yesterday, hundreds fled Al-Shifa Hospital on foot as loud explosions were heard around the complex. Columns of sick and injured were seen leaving with displaced people, doctors and nurses.
At least 15 bodies, some in advanced stages of decomposition, were strewn along the route, an AFP journalist said.
The WHO said 29 patients at the hospital with serious spinal injuries cannot move without medical assistance.
Israel has told Palestinians to move south for their safety, but deadly strikes continued there too.
At least 26 people were killed in a strike that hit a residential building yesterday, according to the director of the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis.
Israeli troops raided Al-Shifa Hospital earlier this week on suspicion that it was being used as a Hamas base.
Israel has been under pressure to prove its allegations that a Hamas command centres is concealed beneath the hospital, a claim denied by the group and medical staff.
“We already discovered evidence. We’re going to show more evidence today of tunnels,” Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Herzog, told ABC News.
The WHO described the hospital as a “death zone”, with a mass grave at the entrance and 291 patients left inside with 25 health workers.
“Lack of clean water, fuel, medicines, food and other essential aid over the last six weeks have caused Al-Shifa Hospital—once the largest, most advanced, and best equipped referral hospital in Gaza—to essentially stop functioning as a medical facility,” the WHO said.
“The team observed that due to the security situation, it has been impossible for the staff to carry out effective of waste management in the hospital. Corridors and the hospital grounds were filled with medical and solid waste, increasing the risk of infection.
Patients and health staff with whom they spoke were terrified for their safety and health, and pleaded for evacuation.
It said it was planning “the immediate evacuation of the remaining patients, staff and their families”.
But it warned that nearby facilities were already overstretched and urged an immediate ceasefire given the “extreme suffering of the people of Gaza”.
Al-Shifa head of surgery Marwan Abu Sada told AFP that Israeli troops were still in the hospital and it was surrounded by tanks.
“I heard at least two explosions since this morning,” he said.
Doctors said Israeli troops were going from building to building and regularly detonated explosives on the ground floors and hospital basements searching for Hamas tunnels.
A Gaza health official said more than 80 people were killed on Saturday in twin strikes on Jabalia refugee camp, the territory’s largest, including on a UN school sheltering displaced people.
The Israeli army said only that “an incident in the Jabalia region” was under review without elaborating.
“The horrendous events of the past 48 hours in Gaza beggar belief,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement, referring to actions “which fly in the face of the basic protections civilians must be afforded under international law.”
With just a trickle of aid allowed in from Egypt, Israel permitted a first consignment of fuel to enter Gaza late Friday under US pressure, allowing telecommunications to resume after a two-day blackout.
Some 120,000 litres of fuel arrived today, according to the UN.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government had vowed to keep aid out of Hamas’s hands, said the fuel would power basic necessities like water pumps and sewage systems to prevent disease outbreak.
“The humanitarian assistance is also vital to ensure continued international support,” he told a news conference.
A US official has said more fuel deliveries and a “significant pause” in fighting would come “when hostages are released”.
The White House denied a Washington Post report of a tentative agreement.
But Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said today that a deal to free hostages hinges on “very minor” practical issues, without elaborating.
US deputy national security advisor Jon Finer told NBC they were “closer than we have been in quite some time” to securing a deal.
But he added on CBS: “The mantra that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed really does apply.”
Relatives of some of the hostages yesterday marched to Netanyahu’s Jerusalem office, demanding action to free them.
The bodies of two female hostages were recovered in Gaza this week, the Israeli military said, while four abductees have so far been released by Hamas and a fifth rescued by troops.
US President Joe Biden threatened sanctions against Israeli settlers who have ramped up attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in recent weeks.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began, Israeli troops and settlers have killed more than 200 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the health ministry in Ramallah.
The PRCS today reported two deaths in overnight army raids in Jenin and the Bethlehem area.
© AFP 2023, with reporting from Jane Moore
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