MEDICS, patients and displaced people fled from the main hospital in central Gaza today as the fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian resistance fighters drew closer, according to witnesses.
Losing the facility would be another major blow to a health system obliterated by three months of brutal Israeli assaults.
Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups withdrew from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in recent days, saying it is too dangerous.
The Israeli offensive has already killed more than 22,800 Palestinians, devastated vast swaths of the Gaza Strip, displaced nearly 85 per cent of its population of 2.3 million and left a quarter of its residents facing starvation.
The offensive has also threatened to ignite a wider war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other resistance groups allied with Hamas.
Hamas staged a surprise uprising against the Israeli occupation which left 1,200 dead and some 250 people taken as prisoners of war.
Over 100 of the detainees were released during a ceasefire between the warring sides in November.
Tens of thousands of people have sought shelter in Gaza’s hospitals, which are also struggling to treat dozens of people wounded each day in Israeli strikes.
Only 13 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are even partially functioning, according to the United Nations humanitarian office.
Omar al-Darawi, an employee at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, said the facility has been struck multiple times in recent days. He said thousands of people left after the aid groups pulled out, and that patients have been concentrated on one floor so the remaining doctors can tend to them more easily.
“We have large numbers of wounded who can’t move,” he said. “They need special care which is unavailable.”
More dead and wounded arrive each day, as Israeli forces advance in central Gaza following heavy air strikes.
The Health Ministry said early on Monday that 73 bodies and 99 wounded people were brought to the hospital in just the last 24 hours.
World Health Organisation staff who visited on Sunday saw “sickening scenes of people of all ages being treated on blood-streaked floors and in chaotic corridors,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the UN agency, said in a statement. “The bloodbath in Gaza must end.”
