Israel Ready To Evacuate Baby From Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza Health Authority: We Have Not Been Notified

Victims of children as a result of Israeli attacks at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza, Palestine. (Wikimedia Commons/Wafa in contact with a local company APAimages)

JAKARTA - Israeli military officials said they were ready to evacuate the babies from Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, while authorities in the enclave said there were still many people on board and they had not been informed of the plan.

Israel's chief military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Badhi, said on Saturday his party would help evacuate babies from the hospital at staff's request.

Al-Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza, the region that has been the focus of Israel's war for a month to destroy Hamas and release hostages detained by militants, are barely capable of treating patients. More and more people are injured every day due to Israel's fierce bombings.

Speaking from inside Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said Israeli fire did not hit the hospital directly, but "reported medical officials and civilians".

Furthermore, Al-Qidra mentioned that there were a total of 45 babies there. Unfortunately, two of the babies have died.

"We have not been informed of any mechanism to take the babies to a safer hospital. So far we have prayed for their safety and have not lost more babies," he said.

At the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, a baby boy, Mosab Subeih, was rushed to the hospital from a house hit by an Israeli missile.

"He suffered head-to-head injuries and bleeding, and we did not undergo surgery," said one of the medics, who treated him with manual resuscitation due to power outages.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Red Crescent said medical staff at another hospital in northern Gaza, Al-Quds, were struggling to treat those there due to shortages of medicine, food and water.

"The Al Quds hospital has been cut off from the world in the last 6-7 days. There is no way in, no way out," Tommaro Della Longa, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Associations, told Reuters.

Al-Shifa Hospital is also beyond the reach of new injured victims, Mohammad Qandil, a doctor at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, who is in contact with his colleagues there.

"Shifa Hospital is now not functioning, no one is allowed to enter, no one is allowed to leave, and if you are injured or injured around the Gaza region, you cannot be evacuated by ambulance us to Shifa Hospital, so Shifa Hospital now no longer exists," he explained.

Israel said people could safely be evacuated from three hospitals in northern Gaza, including Shifa, through one of the exits on Sunday.

However, hospital director Mohammad Abu Selmedah told Al Arabiya television there was no safe exit.