Gaza: Hamas reports death of 24 patients due to lack of electricity at Al Shifa Hospital

The reporting war around the world’s most popular hospital complex continues. Hamas announced on Friday the death of 24 patients due to a lack of electricity at Al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army continues to search for hiding places of the Palestinian Islamist movement.

Hamas Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidre said on Friday that “24 patients” have died “in the last 48 hours” at Al-Shifa Hospital “because vital medical equipment stopped working due to a power outage,” lack of fuel generators.

Shortly before that, Israel agreed to allow two truckloads of fuel each day into the besieged Gaza Strip, where gasoline shortages have destroyed many hospitals, cut off electricity and cut off humanitarian aid supplies, threatening the population with “famine,” according to the UN. .

However, these two daily truckloads represent only a very small fraction of the amount of gasoline, or 50 truckloads, that entered the Gaza Strip every day before the war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7, according to the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).

A “catastrophic” situation for patients and caregivers.

For weeks, the UN has called for a massive supply of fuel to the Gaza Strip, in part to allow hospitals to operate and aid trucks to move through. Since October 9, the territory has been under “total siege” by Israel, which has cut off supplies of food, water, electricity and medicine. Israel has so far refused to allow the fuel to pass through, saying it could benefit Hamas’ military activities.

At Al Shifa Hospital, the largest in the area, where the Israeli army launched a raid on Wednesday after days of fighting in the surrounding area, the situation is “catastrophic” for patients, displaced people and caregivers. “No water, no food,” confirmed its director, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya. According to the UN, 2,300 people are currently in hospital.

The army said it was continuing to excavate a huge residential complex it said was a Hamas lair, set in part by a network of tunnels dug into its basement, which the Islamist movement denies. Israel has vowed to “destroy” Hamas, which came to power in the Gaza Strip in 2007, following its October 7 attack on Israeli soil.

The attack, unprecedented in brutality and scale since Israel’s creation in 1948, killed 1,200 people, the vast majority of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities. According to the army, 51 Israeli soldiers were killed during the fighting in Palestinian territory. In the Gaza Strip, ongoing Israeli bombing in response to the attack has killed at least 12,000 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.