The hospitals in the center of the heaviest north Gaza fighting have been forced out of service amid shortages and combat, the Hamas-run health ministry said Monday, adding the number of patients dying in the biggest medical center had risen.
UN agencies and doctors inside the facility warned the effects of the raging battles were claiming the lives of civilians including infants. As witnesses reported more "violent fighting", overnight aerial bombardments and the clatter of gunfire echoed across the sprawling Al-Shifa hospital at the heart of Gaza City, now an urban war zone.
The Gaza government's deputy health minister Youssef Abu Rish said six premature babies had died in the hospital, Gaza's biggest, along with nine other patients in intensive care due to the lack of electricity.
Abu Rish told AFP all hospitals in the north of the embattled territory were "out of service".
The World Health Organization in the Palestinian Territories warned that up to 3,000 patients and staff are sheltering inside without adequate fuel, water or food, after the UN's humanitarian agency said previously that 20 of Gaza's 36 hospitals have been disabled. "Regrettably, the hospital is not functioning as a hospital anymore," said WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, after contacting on-the-ground staff inside the Al-Shifa complex.
"Tragically, the number of patient fatalities has increased significantly," he said in a post on X, adding that al-Shifa was "not functioning as a hospital anymore". Tedros joined other top United Nations officials in calling for an immediate ceasefire.
"The world cannot stand silent while hospitals, which should be safe havens, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, and despair," he said.
The president of Indonesia, home to the world's biggest Muslim population, also called for a ceasefire ahead of meeting U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington on Monday.
"A ceasefire must be implemented soon, we also must accelerate and increase the amount of humanitarian aid, and we must begin peace negotiations," President Joko Widodo said in a video recorded after he took part in an Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Riyadh.
He said the world seemed "helpless" in the face of the suffering of the Palestinians. The extraordinary joint Islamic-Arab summit also urged the International Criminal Court to investigate "war crimes and crimes against humanity that Israel is committing" in the Palestinian territories. Israel says it is trying to free the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas militants on Oct. 7 and says the hospitals should be evacuated.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said the strip's second largest hospital, Al-Quds, was also out of service, with staff struggling to care for those already there with little medicine, food, and water.
"Al Quds Hospital has been cut off from the world in the last six to seven days. No way in, no way out," said Tommaso Della Longa, spokesperson for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
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