WHO says it has lost communication with its contacts in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza

The World Health Organization said on Saturday it has lost communication with its contacts in Al Shifa hospital in northern Gaza, and expressed “grave concerns” for the safety of everyone trapped there by the fighting while calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The spokesperson for the Gaza health ministry said that operations in Al Shifa hospital complex, the largest in the Palestinian enclave, were suspended after it ran out of fuel.

WHO said it has “grave concerns for the safety of the health workers, hundreds of sick and injured patients, including babies on life support and displaced people who remain inside the hospital”, and reiterated its call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas have trapped thousands of people in Gaza’s hospitals, as medics and aid workers warned patients will die in the crippled facilities unless there is a pause in the battle, AFP reports.

“If we do not stop this bloodshed immediately with a ceasefire or at the bare minimum a medical evacuation of patients, these hospitals will become a morgue,” medical aid group Doctors Without Borders warned.

Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the biggest in the territory, is “totally surrounded and bombardments are going on nearby”, the hospital’s director, Mohammad Abu Salmiya, said in a statement last night.

“The medical team cannot work and the bodies, in their dozens, cannot be managed or buried,” he said.

Inside the hospital, Doctors Without Borders surgeon Mohammed Obeid said there was no water, power, food, or internet for about 600 post-operative patients, 37-40 babies and 17 people in intensive care.

A doctor at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City says that the Israeli army opens fire on those who want to flee the hospital.

“They shoot anyone who wants to go out of the hospital. If anyone moves between units, they shoot them. There are many martyrs in the yard in front of the emergency room, the situation is very bad and dangerous, it is indescribable,” she said.