All hospitals in northern Gaza are out of service: Health Ministry

All hospitals in northern Gaza are out of service, the region’s health ministry notified!

Two of Gaza’s biggest hospitals have shut operations due to intense Israeli bombing in the vicinity, which has left hundreds of people killed and injured.

Youssef Abu Rish, deputy health minister in the Gaza Strip, told AFP all hospitals in the north of the enclave were “out of service”.

As reported, staff at the Al-Shifa Hospital have been fighting to keep the newborns alive after oxygen supplies ran out and they had to move the babies by hand from the neonatal unit’s incubators to a different part of the hospital

Hospitals in the north of the Palestinian enclave, including the al-Shifa complex, are blockaded by Israeli forces and barely able to care for those inside.

Three newborns are dead at Shifa and more are at risk from power outages amid intense fighting nearby, according to medical staff.

The director of Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa,  Dr Muhammad Abu Salmiya told Aljazeera: “We have no electricity except in the emergency section. The nursery section is out of service, the maternity is out of service, and all internal sections are out of service. Yesterday, five injured have died because they were in need of surgeries. We couldn’t conduct such surgeries. Today two have died, they were in a very serious condition — we couldn’t operate on them due to a lack of electricity.

“All our blood bank stock is over — our MRIs are out of service. Our dialysis equipment — for two days our patients haven’t been through dialysis. The oxygen generators are not working. We had two generators, one was attacked the other was out of fuel.

“We don’t have a single drop of water. All of the tanks of water are on top of the hospital so we can’t operate water without electricity. This is not a hospital anymore. Our medical staff can’t offer any medical services to any patients.

The doctor’s concerns were confirmed via images that went viral on social media showing several newborn babies who were taken off incubators at the hospital clustered helplessly together and placed in one bed.