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Médecins Sans Frontières: Gaza patients and medical staff ‘trapped in hospitals under fire’
Médecins Sans Frontières has warned that patients and medical staff in Gaza are “trapped in hospitals under fire” and called on the “Israeli government to cease this unrelenting assault on Gaza’s health system”.
In a statement released on Saturday, the humanitarian organization said:
Over the past 24 hours, hospitals in Gaza have been under relentless bombardment. Al-Shifa hospital complex, the biggest health facility where MSF staff are still working, has been hit several times, including the maternity and outpatient departments, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries.
The hostilities around the hospital have not stopped. MSF teams and hundreds of patients are still inside Al-Shifa hospital. MSF urgently reiterates its calls to stop the attacks against hospitals, for an immediate ceasefire and for the protection of medical facilities, medical staff and patients.
Dr. Mohammed Obeid, an MSF surgeon at Dar al-Shifa hospital, said:
There are a lot of patients already operated on and they cannot walk. They cannot evacuate … We need an ambulance to move them, we don’t have ambulances to evacuate all of these patients.
We cannot leave because from [yesterday] morning until now, we operated on about 25 patients. If I am not here or the other surgeon, who will take care of the patients? There is a patient who needs surgery, another one is already sleeping [under anesthesia].
MSF also said that it has lost contact with a surgeon working and sheltering at al-Quds hospital with his family.
Key events
Gaza’s border authority announced on Saturday that the Rafah land crossing into Egypt would reopen on Sunday for foreign passport holders and dependents.
Reuters reports:
The crossing between Gaza and Egypt’s Sinai peninsula is the only entry into the strip not controlled by Israel, and has been crucial for aid trucks and evacuees, who number in the thousands.
Evacuations from the Gaza Strip into Egypt, including for Palestinians needing urgent medical treatment, were suspended on Friday, Egyptian and Palestinian sources said, due to problems transporting medical evacuees from northern Gaza.
The border would begin operating at 9 am local time (0700 GMT) for foreigners and medical evacuees, Egyptian sources said.
Here are some images coming through the newswires from Gaza where over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes while thousands more remain trapped in shelters and hospitals amid Israel’s deadly siege with scarce food, water and medical aid:
Here is Agence France-Presse’s report on the thousands of Palestinians trapped inside Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital amid deadly Israeli strikes:
Thousands of displaced Palestinians looked to Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, as a safe haven, but with Israeli strikes intensifying and the fighting reaching the gates of the compound, there seems nowhere for them to escape.
Ahmed al-Shawa, who sought refuge in the hospital, said he was afraid he would be “cut down by shrapnel,” if he stepped outside.
“The situation is very, very dangerous,” the 18-year-old from Gaza City said as the sound of explosions echoed in the background.
Crowds of people have crammed into the corridors of Al-Shifa to escape the fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, adding to the overwhelming number of war casualties at the hospital.
The facility was hit repeatedly overnight in a new round of strikes that knocked out the power for several hours, its director said.
The outage had resulted in the death of two premature babies, the NGO Physicians for Human Rights Israel said, citing doctors inside the hospital.
Many of the displaced were afraid to leave the hospital, with medics including from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) saying they saw people being shot at as they attempted to flee the hospital.
“We are being killed here, please do something,” a nurse from MSF pleaded from inside the hospital’s basement, where he and his family were sheltering.
“The shelling is so close, my kids are crying and screaming in fear,” MSF cited the nurse as saying in a text message.
The Israeli military said “there is no shooting at the hospital” but acknowledged troops were engaged in clashes with Hamas militants around the complex.
Médecins Sans Frontières reports that medical staff in Gaza have become so overwhelmed by the amount of incoming patients that the surgical board used to keep track of upcoming surgeries has been erased and replaced with the following words:
“Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us.”
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said that more than 100 of its workers have been killed in Gaza and repeated its calls for international cooperation on a political solution to halt the ongoing bloodshed in Gaza.
In an address on Saturday at the Saudi-hosted Arab-Islamic summit on the Gaza, UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini said:
The UN Agency for Palestine Refugees is in mourning for 101 colleagues confirmed killed in Gaza.
On Monday, UN flags worldwide will be at half-mast to honor their memory.
Across the Gaza Strip, more than 10,000 people have reportedly been killed, with the majority to be women and children. Many more are surely still under the rubble.
The Israeli Forces have pushed over 1.5 million people out of the north of the Gaza Strip.
More than 700,000 women, children and men now live in UNRWA schools and shelters …
Basic services are crumbling. Everything is running out – food, water, medicine and fuel.
The dramatic developments at the al-Shifa hospital last night pushed many health staff and wounded people to leave …
I have 13,000 colleagues in Gaza. Most are displaced. Many continue to work …
We can offer much more if we have the means …
A political solution has become a matter of life and death for millions of people. A genuine prospect of Palestinian statehood is critical. We must step back from the brink before it’s too late.
Summary
It is 10pm in Gaza and Tel Aviv. Here is where the day stands:
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The UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator has released a statement saying: “Hospitals must be places of greater safety, not of war.” In a tweet on Saturday, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said: “There can be no justification for acts of war in healthcare facilities, leaving them with no power, food or water, and shooting at patients and civilians trying to flee.”
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Médecins Sans Frontières has warned that patients and medical staff in Gaza are “trapped in hospitals under fire” and called on the “Israeli government to cease this unrelenting assault on Gaza’s health system”. In a statement released on Saturday, the humanitarian organization said: “MSF urgently reiterates its calls to stop the attacks against hospitals, for an immediate ceasefire and for the protection of medical facilities, medical staff and patients.”
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The Israeli military will help evacuate babies trapped in Gaza’s Dar al-Shifa hospital on Sunday, the chief Israeli military spokesperson rear admiral Daniel Hagari said on Saturday, Reuters reports. “The staff of the Shifa hospital has requested that tomorrow we help the babies in the pediatric department to get to a safer hospital. We will provide the assistance needed,” Hagari told a news conference.
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Two premature babies have died due to power cuts at Dar al-Shifa hospital, Physicians for Human Rights Israel said on Saturday. “As a result of the lack of electricity, we can report that the neonatal intensive care unit has stopped working. Two premature infants have died, and there is a real risk to the lives of 37 other premature infants” at Al-Shifa hospital, the group said, citing doctors at the hospital, Agence France-Presse reports.
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Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant has warned Hezbollah on Saturday not to escalate fighting along the border. “Hezbollah is dragging Lebanon into a war that might happen,” Gallant told troops in a video aired by Israeli television channels, Reuters reports.
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Anti-war protestors have gathered in Tel Aviv this evening in calls for a ceasefire and the release of hostages by Hamas. Many demonstrators carried signs reading, “Israelis for ceasefire,” “War has no winners” and “Only peace talks with solve this”.
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Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi has called on Islamic governments to designate Israel’s military a “terrorist organisation”, citing its current operations in the Gaza Strip. “Islamic governments should designate the army of the occupying and aggressor regime as a terrorist organisation,” Raisi told the summit of Arab and Muslim leaders in the Saudi capital Riyadh, according to AFP.
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Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), has urged the joint Arab-Islamic summit to “act now to change the trajectory” of the crisis in Gaza. Lazzarini called for support for a humanitarian ceasefire, a continuous flow of humanitarian aid and support for the UNRWA.
Anti-war protestors gather in Tel Aviv in calls for ceasefire and the release of hostages by Hamas
Anti-war protestors have gathered in Tel Aviv this evening as they call for a ceasefire and the release of hostages by Hamas.
Videos posted on social media show protestors holding signs saying, “Israelis for ceasefire,” “War has no winners” and “Only peace talks will solve this”.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said that an immediate ceasefire in Gaza should be discussed now.
During a press conference held on Saturday for a joint Arab-Islamic conference on Gaza, the Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said that any talk about the future of Gaza should only be about an immediate ceasefire, Reuters reports. He said:
The only future, and this is the unifying position of the Arab, is an immediate ceasefire.
The Israeli military will help evacuate babies trapped in Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital on Sunday, the chief Israeli military spokesperson rear admiral Daniel Hagari said on Saturday, Reuters reports.
Hagari told a news conference:
The staff of the Shifa hospital has requested that tomorrow we help the babies in the pediatric department to get to a safer hospital. We will provide the assistance needed.
The Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Hamas group, said on Saturday they had completely or partially destroyed more than 160 Israeli military targets in Gaza in the past 48 hours, including more than 25 vehicles, Reuters reports.
Spokesperson Abu Ubaida said:
The confrontation is unequal, but it frightens and terrifies the most powerful force in the region
Across Gaza, people with specific needs such as older people with medical conditions are struggling with harsh living conditions amid Israel’s seige and deadly bombardments that has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians.
“Getting a loaf of bread has become a thing of the past,” an older displaced man told UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, from the Khan Younis Training Center.
“Here, there is a shortage of all necessities. There is either no water or it is very scarce and not clean … I suffer from nerve and urinary tract problems. As for using the bathroom, it’s very challenging. We wait in line for an hour or more,” he added.
Hezbollah has announced that it is introducing new weapons in its ongoing battles with Israeli troops.
The Associated Press reports:
The leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group said Saturday his fighters have introduced new weapons, including a missile with a heavy warhead, in the ongoing fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border, adding that they will keep using the tense frontier to pressure Israel.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah also blasted the United States over the Israel-Hamas war, saying it is the only country that can stop Israel’s wide offensive on the Gaza Strip but doesn’t do so. He said attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria, that Washington says have reached more than 40 rockets and suicide drone attacks, will continue until the war in Gaza comes to an end.
Nasrallah’s comments came as the situation along Lebanon’s southern border continues to escalate. Hezbollah on Friday attacked northern Israel with three suicide drones after an Israeli strike in central Syria killed seven Hezbollah fighters.
Nasrallah did not claim responsibility for a suicide drone attack that hit the Israeli Red Sea town of Eilat on Thursday but called it “a great achievement.”
Hezbollah and Israeli troops have been exchanging fire along the Lebanon-Israel border since Oct. 8, a day after Hamas’s deadly assault in southern Israel that left at least 1,200 Israeli civilians and troops dead and more than 200 taken hostages.
Hezbollah officials say that by attacking Israeli posts along the border, the Iran-backed group is keeping three Israeli army divisions busy at a time when Israeli troops are pushing into the Gaza Strip where more than 11,000 people have been killed over the past five weeks, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
“The side that can stop this aggression, is the side that is managing this aggression. It is America,” Nasrallah said, referring to the United States, a main supporter of Israel.
UN: ‘No justification for acts of war in healthcare facilities’
The UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator has released a statement saying: “Hospitals must be places of greater safety, not of war.”
In a tweet on Saturday, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said:
There can be no justification for acts of war in healthcare facilities, leaving them with no power, food or water, and shooting at patients and civilians trying to flee.
This is unconscionable, reprehensible, and must stop.
Hospitals must be places of greater safety, and those who need them must trust that they are places of shelter and not of war.
Médecins Sans Frontières: Gaza patients and medical staff ‘trapped in hospitals under fire’
Médecins Sans Frontières has warned that patients and medical staff in Gaza are “trapped in hospitals under fire” and called on the “Israeli government to cease this unrelenting assault on Gaza’s health system”.
In a statement released on Saturday, the humanitarian organization said:
Over the past 24 hours, hospitals in Gaza have been under relentless bombardment. Al-Shifa hospital complex, the biggest health facility where MSF staff are still working, has been hit several times, including the maternity and outpatient departments, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries.
The hostilities around the hospital have not stopped. MSF teams and hundreds of patients are still inside Al-Shifa hospital. MSF urgently reiterates its calls to stop the attacks against hospitals, for an immediate ceasefire and for the protection of medical facilities, medical staff and patients.
Dr. Mohammed Obeid, an MSF surgeon at Dar al-Shifa hospital, said:
There are a lot of patients already operated on and they cannot walk. They cannot evacuate … We need an ambulance to move them, we don’t have ambulances to evacuate all of these patients.
We cannot leave because from [yesterday] morning until now, we operated on about 25 patients. If I am not here or the other surgeon, who will take care of the patients? There is a patient who needs surgery, another one is already sleeping [under anesthesia].
MSF also said that it has lost contact with a surgeon working and sheltering at al-Quds hospital with his family.
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