Health officials say patients dying due to energy shortages as fighting between Israel and Hamas intensifies
Israeli forces have reached the gates of Gaza’s largest hospital as hundreds of patients, including dozens of babies, remained trapped inside.
Thousands of people have fled al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, but health officials said the remaining patients were dying due to energy shortages amid intense fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants.
Lifesaving equipment such as incubators cannot run without fuel to run generators. At least 32 patients, including three premature babies, had died over the past three days, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said.
The Israeli military said it was providing safe corridors for people to escape intense fighting in the north and move south, but Palestinian officials inside Shifa said the compound was surrounded by constant heavy gunfire.
Fighting has been concentrating in a tightening circle around Shifa’s gates since Israeli ground forces entered Gaza, after Hamas militants killed at least 1,200 people and abducted 240 hostages in Israel in a surprise attack on 7 October.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have repeatedly said that Hamas operates from bunkers underneath Shifa. This has been denied by Hamas and hospital staff.
There are between 600 and 650 inpatients at Shifa, as well as 200 to 500 health workers, and about 1,500 displaced people seeking shelter there, according to information shared with the World Health Organization, which was posted on X.
The WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a post on X that Shifa was “not functioning as a hospital anymore”.
