Medics Fear For Patients Inside Gaza Hospitals

(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Palestinian medics said yesterday they are increasingly afraid for the lives of hundreds of patients and medical staff at Gaza's biggest hospital, cut off from all links to the outside world for more than a day after Israeli forces entered.
Israel said its commandos were still searching through Al Shifa hospital on Thursday, more than a day after they entered its grounds as part of an offensive Israel says aims to wipe out Hamas fighters in the Palestinian enclave.
Israel has so far released pictures of what it says were rifles and flak jackets found on the premises, but no evidence of a vast underground Hamas command headquarters it said was operating in tunnels beneath it. Human Rights Watch cautioned that hospitals have special protections under international humanitarian law.
"Hospitals only lose those protections if it can be shown that harmful acts have been carried out from the premises," the watchdog's UN Director Louis Charbonneau said.
"The Israeli government hasn't provided any evidence of that."
The director of Al Shifa Complex, Muhammad Abu Salamiya, said the hospital was "under occupation authority for 48 hours and every minute that passes" more patients will die.
"We are waiting for slow death," he told Al Jazeera TV.
Israeli forces brought a BBC film crew into the hospital overnight and showed it some rifles they said were found there, but the broadcaster said Israeli escorts had barred its team from interacting with patients or staff.
Gaza's health ministry said Israeli soldiers had removed bodies from the hospital grounds and destroyed cars parked there, but they were not letting staff or patients leave.
Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said there was no water, food or baby milk in Shifa, which was packed with 650 patients and about 7,000 people displaced by weeks of Israeli air strikes and artillery bombardments.
He demanded that the Israeli troops leave. Medics have previously said dozens of patients including three premature babies had died from of a lack of fuel and basic supplies during a days-long siege.
UNRWA operations strangled
Humanitarian bodies issued some of their direst warnings about the harm Israel's military campaign in Gaza was causing to civilians.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said the Gaza Strip faced widespread hunger, with supplies of food and water almost exhausted.
"With winter fast approaching, unsafe and overcrowded shelters, and the lack of clean water, civilians are facing the immediate possibility of starvation," said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain.
The head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said he believed there was a deliberate attempt to "strangle.
its humanitarian work in Gaza, warning the agency may have to entirely suspend its operations due to a lack of fuel.
Israel refuses fuel imports, saying they could be used by Hamas for military purposes.
Gaza's main telecommunications companies, Paltel and Jawwal, said all telecom services in Gaza had gone down, as all energy sources supplying the network had run out.
The World Health Organisation said it was trying to arrange a medical evacuation of patients from Shifa, but was hindered by security concerns and the inability to communicate with anyone there. WHO officials understood around 600 patients were still inside, including 27 in critical condition.
All hospitals in northern Gaza have effectively been shut down by Israeli forces, who have ordered the evacuation of the entire northern part of the enclave, home to more than half its 2.3mn people.
At the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza, about 45 patients who need urgent surgery have been left in the reception area, hospital chief Atef al-Kahlout said.
Elsewhere, Israel ordered civilians to leave four towns in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, raising fears war could spread to areas where it had told people they would be safe.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement Israeli forces had cleared the entire west part of Gaza City and that the "next stage has begun".
The United Nations says around two-thirds of Gaza's population have been made homeless, most of them sheltering in towns in the south.

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