2023-11-14 09:13:04
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Another 200,000 people have fled the northern Gaza Strip since Nov. 5, the United Nations humanitarian office said Tuesday, as Israeli ground forces battle Palestinian insurgents around hospitals where patients, newborns and doctors are stranded without power and dwindling supplies.
The humanitarian office, known as OCHA, indicated that in the north there is only one hospital left that can receive patients. The others can no longer operate and most serve as shelters for the fighting, including the largest, Shifa, which is surrounded by Israeli troops and where there are 36 babies in danger of death because there is no longer electricity for the incubators.
The war, which is in its sixth week, began following Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel, in which the insurgents massacred hundreds of civilians and took regarding 240 people to Gaza as hostages. For almost three weeks, Israel launched intense aerial bombardments on the besieged territory before a ground campaign with infantry and tanks in the north. The war has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians and wreaked widespread destruction on the impoverished coastal enclave.
Israel urged civilians to evacuate Gaza City and its northern environs, but the south of the territory is not much safer. Israel carries out frequent airstrikes across the enclave once morest what it identifies as insurgent targets, but often kills women and children.
UN-run shelters in the south are well over capacity, with an average of one toilet for 160 people. In total, around 1.5 million Palestinians, more than two-thirds of the Strip’s population, have fled their homes.
People line up for hours to get scarce bread and brackish water. Garbage piles up, sewage floods the streets, and there is no drinking water because there is no fuel for water pumps or treatment plants. Israel has banned the import of fuel since the start of the war, alleging that Hamas would use it for military purposes.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which is trying to provide basic services to the more than 600,000 people sheltering in schools and other facilities in the south, said it might run out of fuel on Wednesday, forcing it to suspend operations. most of its operations. He also said he might no longer import limited supplies of food and medicine through the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, Gaza’s only link to the outside world.
With Israeli forces battling Palestinian insurgents in central Gaza, the enclave’s main city, both sides have turned their attention to the difficult situation in hospitals. Images of doctors trying to keep newborns warm in Shifa have gone viral.
Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals as hiding places for its fighters and maintains that the insurgent group has its main command center in and below Shifa, without presenting visual evidence. Both Hamas and the hospital staff deny the accusations.
For weeks, supply shortages have forced the center’s staff to operate on war-wounded patients, including children, without anesthesia and using vinegar as an antiseptic.
Early Tuesday, the Israeli military said in a statement that it had begun an operation to move incubators from Israel to Shifa. It was not clear if the incubators had been delivered or how they would be fed.
International law grants hospitals special protections during war. They can lose those protections if combatants use them for concealment or to store weapons, but staff and patients must be notified in advance to evacuate and harm to civilians cannot be disproportionate to the military objective.
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Magdy reported from Cairo, Egypt. Associated Press writer Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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