GAZA STRIP: Medics are sounding the alarm at southern Gaza’s Nasser hospital, where a nurse said snipers are killing people, sewage has flooded the emergency room and drinking water has run out.
“It was a black night, with strikes and explosions all night,” Mohammed Al Astal, a nurse in the emergency department, said on Wednesday. Astal said the facility had been “besieged” for a month, with constant danger and no food or drinking water left.
“At night, tanks opened heavy fire on the hospital and snipers on the roofs of buildings surrounding Nasser hospital opened fire and killed three displaced people,” the 39-year-old nurse said.
He said several young men and some women were detained on Tuesday by Israeli troops, who also “forced the displaced people to leave under gunfire”. Gaza’s health ministry reported that thousands of people, including patients, have been made to leave the hospital.
Israeli forces operating across the Gaza Strip have repeatedly raided hospitals, which are granted special protection under the laws of war.
World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday he was “alarmed” by reports from Nasser hospital, which he described as the “backbone of the health system in southern Gaza”.
The agency has been denied access to the hospital in recent days and has lost contact with staff there, the WHO chief wrote on X.
Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2024
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