World

Bodies line Gaza hospital wall and surgeons operate in corridors

November 1, 2023 4:47 pm

[Source: Reuters]

Dozens of bodies lay shrouded in white, lined up against the side of Gaza Strip’s Indonesian Hospital from what health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave said was an Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp.

The hospital had already been struggling under an influx of patients badly wounded by Israeli bombing, with medics setting up an operating room in a corridor because the main surgical theatres were full, they said.

Juggling dwindling supplies of medicines, power cuts and air or artillery strikes that have shaken hospital buildings, surgeons in Gaza work night and day trying to save a constant stream of patients.

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“We take it an hour at a time because we don’t know when we will be receiving patients. Several times we’ve had to set up surgical spaces in the corridors and even sometimes in the hospital waiting areas,” said Dr. Mohammed al-Run.

He was speaking soon after a bombardment damaged the Indonesian Hospital near the frontlines of Israel’s military thrust into the crowded Palestinian territory, and with a fuel supply for generators doctors say is about to run out.

Israeli tanks have entered Gaza, home to 2.3 million people, after three weeks of intense bombing of entire districts in response to an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants who killed 1,400 people in southern Israel and grabbed 240 hostages.

Health authorities in the Hamas-run strip say more than 8,500 people have been killed in Israel’s assault, including 3,500 children.

In northern Gaza, where Israel has ordered a million people to leave their homes and head for the southern half of the enclave, which it is also bombing, hospital conditions have been especially tough.

Tuesday’s blast at Jabalia, Gaza’s largest refugee camp, killed 50 people and wounded 150 others, health authorities said. There was no immediate statement about the strike from Israel’s military.

Footage of the aftermath in a video obtained by Reuters showed scores of people lining the side of a massive crater as they watched rescue efforts, part of a moonscape-like rubble in the camp.

Inside the hospital, bloodied patients lay on stretchers and trolleys and Dr. Suaib Idais said, “We have no idea what to do…. There are injured everywhere”.

 

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