There have been several reported sightings of Israeli occupation tanks advancing on Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital. One involved a sniper targeting passing civilians, while quadcopter drones hovered overhead.
These sightings came as the Israel occupation forces claimed that Hamas is “using an active hospital as a terror launch post”, and has fired on them from within Al-Shifa hospital, thereby:
knowingly endangering the lives of patients, medical staff, and innocent residents.
Israel’s tanks advance on Al-Shifa hospital
Al-Shifa hospital was once Gaza’s largest and most vital medical complex, but has faced immense destruction and repeated sieges since the start of the Israeli occupation’s genocide. Ground assaults and airstrikes have reduced the hospital almost to ruins, destroying critical departments such as surgery, intensive care, and emergency services, and at times putting the facility out of service completely.
To justify its attacks, the occupation’s military claimed Hamas used the hospital as a base for its military operations, and had established a command and control centre underneath the hospital, hiding weapons and coordinating attacks from there, in an attempt to make the facility a legitimate military target. But Hamas and the hospital administration have always denied any military use of the medical complex, and no credible evidence has been produced.
Israel committing ‘medicide’ in the Gaza Strip
The World Health Organization (WHO) and international humanitarian organizations have condemned attacks on health care, including the targeting of hospitals and restricting the delivery of essential aid such as medical supplies, fuel, and water, as violations of international humanitarian law. Meanwhile, the UN accuses the Israeli occupation of deliberately attacking and starving healthcare workers, paramedics and hospitals to wipe out medical care in the Strip, and calling the targeted destruction ‘medicide’.
The occupation has frequently prevented essential medical supplies reaching the hospital, and cut off essential electricity, leading to the deaths of patients, including premature infants who relied on incubators and critically ill adults lacking oxygen and basic care. Medical staff have had to operate in extremely unsanitary conditions, with shortages of medicines including anesthetics and painkillers, and fuel, while there is a constant influx of patients suffering from malnutrition and severely injured civilians from the constant bombardments.
More hospitals out of action
Medical staff at Al-Shifa hospital, as with healthcare workers throughout Gaza, are exhausted and starving, but still keep working to serve their patients. They are now worried that all their patients, staff and thousands of displaced civilians will soon be forcibly evacuated by the occupation, yet again.
Hospitals are struggling to remain open, due to the horrendous conditions, and on 23 September, Gaza’s Health Ministry took two Gaza City hospitals out of operation, due to damage and escalation of the ongoing ground offensive. One of these was the recently bombed Al-Rantissi Children’s Hospital.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, between 12am and 5.25pm local time, 24 September, 92 Palestinians had been killed across the Gaza Strip, 25 of these received at Al-Shifa Hospital.
Featured image via the Canary
By Charlie Jaay
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