Panic and fear at al-Shifa Hospital as Israel give deadline to evacuate
ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency
Sat / 18 November 2023 / 11:12
There is a great state of panic and fear among the patients, medical staff and families following Israeli army's order to evacuate the medical complex within one hour, Reports says.
Tehran (ISNA)- A doctor inside al-Shifa Hospital has told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army has given the hospital one hour to evacuate.
Patients, medical staff and families consider this decision, this order to be an impossible decision to make because they have no ambulances functioning to take that great number of patients to the south.
The Israeli army has not provided them with any other solutions, with any means of transportation, with any fuel for ambulances or for any cars to transfer those patients, premature babies, displaced families to the south as they were ordered to do.
When this same incident happened with al-Quds Hospital, doctor Bashar Murad asked the Israeli army many times to provide ambulances, transportation means, to at least provide fuel so that they can use buses to transport the patients, but there was no answer from the Israeli army; they ordered them to take the patients on foot.
Panic and fear at al-Shifa Hospital as Israel give deadline to evacuate
The doctors in the end, had to evacuate those patients in hospital beds and push them through the streets to the other side.
But at al-Shifa Hospital, the situation is a bit different because there are a lot more patients - over 300. According to our medical sources, most of them are in critical condition and they cannot make the trip on beds to the south.
Al-Shifa Hospital administrators say 40 patients, including four premature babies, have died since November 11 due to power outages, the UN reports.
Meanwhile, Martin Griffiths, UN humanitarian affairs chief, says Israel should give people in Gaza "a briefer" as the humanitarian crisis in the strip has become "intolerable".
"It is without doubt that the humanitarian crisis by any measure ... is intolerable and cannot continue," Griffiths said.
Panic and fear at al-Shifa Hospital as Israel give deadline to evacuate
"Stop the fighting to allow civilians to move safely, do it for an indefinite period to facilitate an unimpeded humanitarian response.
"Give the people of Gaza a breather on the terrible things that have been put on them these last few weeks."
At least 12,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamas's attacks stands at about 1,200.
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