2023-11-18 15:18:55
Conflicting information on the evacuation of the Schifa Clinic
Meanwhile, hundreds of people left Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Saturday. According to Palestinian information, the patients, those seeking protection and staff were forced by the Israeli army to leave the clinic within an hour.
Some people fled in panic on foot on a road heading south, as images from the Archyde.com news agency show. Representatives of the health ministry in the Gaza Strip, run by the radical Islamic group Hamas, said there were only around 120 injured and an unspecified number of premature babies in hospital.
According to the information, the patients left behind are injured people and people with chronic illnesses who cannot be transported. An unspecified number of hospital employees remained on site to look following them.
The Israeli army said the evacuation was at the request of the director of Shifa Hospital. At no time did the army order the evacuation of patients or medical personnel; it simply called for an escape corridor to be used.
The army also released a recording that it said came from a telephone conversation between an Israeli representative and the unnamed director of the Shifa Clinic. In it, he says medical teams have left the hospital and he has no control over their decision. Ultimately, he wanted all patients to leave the clinic. The authenticity of the recording might not initially be independently verified.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila is calling on Israel to transfer patients “left behind” at Shifa Hospital to other clinics. There are still 32 premature babies and 126 injured in the largest clinic in the Gaza Strip, she said in a press conference in Ramallah in the West Bank on Saturday. Those affected would not be able to walk and get to safety. She demanded that the patients be transferred to Egypt or the West Bank.
No evidence yet of Hamas command center under Shifa clinic
The Israeli army is searching the Al-Shifa hospital for the fourth day in a row, where it suspects there is a command center for the radical Islamic Hamas, which rules in the Gaza Strip – but no evidence of such a center has yet been presented to the public. According to UN figures, there were around 2,300 patients, injured and displaced people in the hospital before the evacuation.
According to Doctors Without Borders, aid organization employees and their relatives are trapped near Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip. In total, there are 137 people, including 65 children, who are unable to leave the area safely due to the ongoing heavy fighting in the city of Gaza, the organization said on Saturday. Previous attempts to evacuate the employees and their families have failed.
A ceasefire is urgently needed in order to be able to safely evacuate thousands of stranded civilians, demanded Doctors Without Borders. Otherwise, people who lack food and drinking water risk dying “in the next few days, if not hours,” the organization warned.
Pressure is growing on Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu
Meanwhile, thousands of Israelis arrived in Jerusalem on Saturday. They had left Tel Aviv days ago. Their protest march became more and more popular. They are calling on the war cabinet led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do everything possible to release the hostages kidnapped by Hamas in its attack on Gaza on October 7th.
Critical voices in the country are slowly becoming louder, even if the focus is currently still on external threats. Netanyahu is accused, among other things, of not having taken responsibility for the fact that Israel was so surprised on October 7th.
In the video: ARD correspondent Limpert on the situation in Gaza
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