Medics, patients and displaced people are fleeing from the main hospital in central Gaza as Israeli forces draw closer, witnesses said Monday. Losing the facility would be another major blow to a health system shattered by three months of war.
Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups withdrew from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in recent days, saying it is too dangerous. That spread panic among people sheltering there, causing many to join the hundreds of thousands who have fled to the south of the besieged territory.
Israel says it has largely wrapped up major operations in northern Gaza and is now focusing on the central region and the southern city of Khan Younis. Israeli officials have said the fighting will continue for many more months as Tel Aviv wages total war on the Palestinian enclave.
The offensive has already killed over 22,000 Palestinians, devastated vast swaths of the Gaza Strip, displaced nearly 85% of its population of 2.3 million and left a quarter of its residents facing starvation.
It has also threatened to ignite a wider war with Lebanon's Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militant groups sympathetic to Hamas and the Palestinian cause.
Tens of thousands of people have sought shelter in Gaza's hospitals, which are also struggling to treat dozens of people wounded each day in Israeli strikes. Only 13 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are even partially functioning, according to the U.N. humanitarian office.
Omar al-Darawi, an employee at Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital, said the facility has been struck multiple times in recent days. He said thousands of people left after the aid groups pulled out, and that patients have been concentrated on one floor so the remaining doctors can tend to them more easily.
“We have large numbers of wounded who can’t move” he said. “They need special care which is unavailable.”
More dead and wounded arrive each day, as Israeli forces advance in central Gaza following heavy airstrikes. The Health Ministry said early Monday that 73 bodies and 99 wounded people were brought to the hospital in just the last 24 hours.
World Health Organization staff who visited Sunday saw “sickening scenes of people of all ages being treated on blood-streaked floors and in chaotic corridors,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the U.N. agency, said in a statement. “The bloodbath in Gaza must end.”
The situation is even more dire in northern Gaza, which Israeli forces cut off from the rest of the territory in late October. Entire neighborhoods have been demolished, and hundreds of thousands of people have fled, while those who remain face severe shortages of food, water and medical supplies.
The WHO said late Sunday it has not been able to deliver supplies to northern Gaza in 12 days. “Heavy bombardment, movement restrictions, and interrupted communications are making it nearly impossible to deliver medical supplies regularly and safely across Gaza, particularly in the north," it said.
More than 22,800 Palestinians have been killed, and more than 58,000 wounded, since the war began. About two-thirds of those killed have been women and minors.