Indonesian hospital in Gaza ‘out of service’, overwhelmed with wounded | Israel-Palestine conflict news
An Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza has gone ‘completely out of service’ due to a lack of supplies and a large number of patients amid Israel’s attack on the besieged area, hospital director Atef al-Kahlout has said. has said.
Pictures from the hospital in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip show wounded Palestinians lining the halls of the facility and lying prone in pools of blood.
“We can’t offer more services… we can’t offer beds for patients,” al-Kahlout told Al Jazeera on Thursday.
While the hospital has a capacity of 140 patients, al-Kahlout said that there are currently around 500 patients inside the hospital.
He said 45 patients require “urgent surgical intervention”, and asked ambulances “not to bring more injured people to the facility due to lack of capacity.”
He says the hospital’s departments are unable to “do their jobs”. Health workers at the hospital said there was a severe shortage of supplies.
“We don’t have beds,” a health worker told Al Jazeera during a tour of the building.
“This person needs an intensive care unit,” he said pointing to a young man lying on the ground as a nurse tended to him.
“And [here],” he says pointing to another patient with an amputated leg, “we have no medicine.”
“We are receiving wounded people from Wadi Gaza to Beit Hanoon,” he says, “some have been here for 10 days. “
Nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been injured since Israel launched its offensive on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 11,400 people have been killed, including more than 4,600 children, in Israel’s attack on Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities. Israel has also severely restricted the supply of water, food, electricity and fuel, with aid groups warning of a humanitarian disaster in the enclave.
“Medical team [at the Indonesian hospital] they had to cut some patients [body parts] due to the rotting of the organs,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said from Khan Younis, adding that the hospital cannot transfer the injured to another place.
“All hospitals in Gaza City and the north have stopped working,” director al-Kahlout said.
The Indonesian Hospital, located near the Jabalia refugee camp – the largest in Gaza – has also been sheltering hundreds of displaced people seeking refuge there.
Israeli forces had been close to the hospital several times, with at least two civilians killed in these strikes between October 7 and 28, according to Human Rights Watch.
The Israeli military has said that the Indonesian Hospital is being used “to hide an underground command and control center” for Hamas. Palestinian officials and the Indonesian group that finances the hospital have rejected the claims.
Meanwhile, concerns are growing for the thousands of civilians trapped at al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical center in Gaza, amid continued Israeli attacks. Israel says the hospital houses a Hamas command center, a claim the group has denied.
White House spokesman John Kirby said Thursday that the United States was “confident in our own intelligence assessment” that Hamas has been using the hospital “as a command and control node, and possibly more on a storage facility”.
Late Thursday, the Israeli army released videos it said showed the foot of a Hamas tunnel and a vehicle “containing a large number of weapons” found at the al-Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza.
