Gaza’s main hospital, Al Shifa, is struggling to cope with the influx of casualties from the ongoing Israeli offensive, while diplomatic efforts to end the conflict are underway.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that Al Shifa hospital, the largest health facility in the Gaza Strip, is providing only basic trauma stabilization, has no blood for transfusions and hardly any staff to care for a constant flow of patients.
After a U.N. visit to deliver medicines and surgical supplies, the team described the emergency department as resembling a “bloodbath”. The WHO said there were hundreds of wounded patients, with new ones arriving by the minute and trauma injuries being stitched on the floor, with almost no pain management available.
Only four hospitals of 24 working in north Gaza before the war with Israel began have even partial service, and three of those are barely functioning, the WHO said. The WHO said it was urgently gathering information at the Kamal Adwan hospital, where Gazan authorities said Israeli forces this week used a bulldozer to smash through the perimeter of a site Israel has said was used by Hamas fighters. The group which governs Gaza has denied using the Kamal Adwan or other hospitals for militant activities.
Gazan health authorities say that more than 50,000 Palestinians have been injured during the Israeli operation, and 19,000 killed. The WHO said “tens of thousands” of displaced people were using the Al Shifa hospital for shelter, describing severe shortages of safe water and food. Gaza is home to 2.3 million people, most of whom have been displaced from their homes by the offensive.
Meanwhile, The head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency met Qatar’s prime minister in Europe, according to a source with knowledge of the matter, as attention turned to a possible new Gaza truce and a prisoner and hostage deal.
The meeting between David Barnea and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani was apparently the first between senior officials from Israel and Qatar, which has been acting as a mediator, since the collapse of a seven-day cease-fire in late November.
Combat has intensified in the past two weeks since the collapse of the truce that had allowed dozens of Israeli hostages held in Gaza to be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
Israel continues its bombardment across Gaza.
