Gaza hospital director says 179 buried in 'mass grave' in compound

GAZA: The director of Gaza’s biggest hospital said Tuesday that 179 people, including babies and patients who died in the intensive care unit, had been buried in a “mass grave” at the complex.

“We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” said Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiyah, adding that seven babies and 29 intensive care patients were among those buried after hospital fuel supplies ran out.

“There are bodies littered in the hospital complex and there is no longer electricity at the morgues,” he said, as no fuel has entered the Gaza Strip since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.

On Tuesday, a man and a woman died in the ICU bringing the number of people who had died in the unit to 29, Salmiyah said.

A journalist inside the hospital who is collaborating with AFP said the stench of decomposing bodies was everywhere in the facility.

But he said nighttime fighting and air strikes from Monday into Tuesday had been less intense than previous nights.

Israeli tanks have massed at the gates of Al-Shifa hospital, which Israel says conceals an underground command “node” used by Hamas. It is a charge the Palestinian militant group denies.