In the wake of Israel’s military operation there, UN officials who conducted evacuation missions from Gaza’s Nasser Hospital have described it as a place of death, as a “place of healing” has been turned into a “place of death” as a result of an “appalling” state of affairs at Gaza’s second largest medical facility.
As Israeli forces intensify their bombardment of the hospital as they continue to kill dozens of patients and staff members inside it, the comments made by Israeli forces in videos posted on Wednesday have led to increasing concern for those trapped inside.
Earlier this week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that the hospital, located in Khan Younis city in Gaza, had ceased to function after an ongoing Israeli siege followed by a raid. In conjunction with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and the UN World Health Organization (WHO), the global health agency has been able to evacuate during the past few days more than 32 critical patients, including children injured in the assault and those who suffer from paralysis.
An official of the Office of the Chief of the Mission, Jonathan Whittal, who participated in the evacuations of the hospital on February 18 and 19, said the patients were in a bad situation, because food, water and electricity had been cut off.
It is appalling to see the conditions in which the prisoners live. The corridors are filled with dead bodies,” he said as he pointed to the bodies. “This has become a place where death is taking place, not a place where healing is taking place.”
As reported previously, the rescue mission members had to use flashlights to navigate through pitch black corridors as they searched for patients against a backdrop of gunfire so they could save their lives. There are no roads near the site that they can use due to a deep, muddy ditch near the hospital that has made it impossible for them to arrive by car.
There are many situations in life that can be described as the worst. When you multiply that number by 10 you get the worst situation that I have ever seen in my life, said Julio Martinez, an official with the World Health Organization. In the darkness, it’s the debris, it’s the light – it’s the light that shines through the darkness.”. It’s the light that shines through to every patient.”
There have already been at least eight reports of patients dying at the facility, mainly due to fuel a lack of fuel and oxygen, according to Palestinian health authorities. They claim that the lives of the people who remain at the site have been directly threatened, and they accuse the Israeli army of effectively transforming the site into a military barracks.
There are reports that the entire area surrounding the hospital is damaged and destroyed, according to WHO communications officer Chris Black.
According to him, the hospital itself does not have electricity, food, water, or any of those things.
Some 130 severely injured patients and 15 medical personnel are still present at the scene, according to the WHO.
One of the former colleagues of the doctors and nurses at the hospital told me that despite the desperate situation, the doctors and nurses pleaded not for evacuation, but rather for the hospital’s functions to be restored, regardless of the fact that they were in desperate conditions.
It has been a miserable week for me over the past week. In the hospital, it’s been a nightmarish experience. In January, Dr Thaer Ahmad, an emergency physician practicing in the U.S. who spent several weeks volunteering at Nasser Hospital in January, told a local newspaper that the things the guests saw were traumatising and they requested some kind of assistance.
It is actually their request that the hospital be allowed to function rather than evacuated from the hospital. He said the lights needed to be turned on so the patients could be treated as soon as possible, and we needed medicine for the patients that remained,” he said.
“I spoke with one of the last surgeons left there, he sent a message to a group of physicians here in the United States, and he asked that we advocate for the patients who are there, he asked that we make sure that their wishes are heard. The doctor told us, “I am staring at patients, and I am trying to find out what can I do to assist them, to provide care for them, and yet I am powerless to help them,” Ahmad continued.
According to the WHO, evacuating further patients is still one of the priorities for the organization.
In a statement released earlier this week, the UN agency described Gaza’s health system as having suffered a “major blow” following the dismantling and degradation of Nasser Hospital, the latest medical facility to be used as a battlefield in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. There was a report that said remaining facilities in the south were “well beyond their maximum capacity” and could barely take on more patients, as they were already operating well beyond their maximum capacity.
In the aftermath of Hamas’ surprise attack inside southern Israel on October 7, which came after the Israeli military staged a surprise operation against Gaza, at least 29,092 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli assaults.
In the Hamas attacks on Israel, 1,139 people lost their lives as a result of the violence.
Timenews provided that information.
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