Gaza City – Medical workers are overwhelmed by the number of injured in Gaza’s largest hospital after a night of fierce airstrikes killed and injured dozens of Palestinians.
Shaima Ahmed Qwaider, 23, a nurse at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, on Sunday described horrific scenes of the arrival of seriously injured people, some of them bombing victims of lost limbs.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” he told Al Jazeera. “There were body parts collected in hospital beds and unbearable scenes.”
While rescuers struggled to remove victims from the remains of destroyed buildings, many of those rescued could not reach the hospital as the main road leading to al-Shifa, the largest medical center in the strip, had also been hit. Gaza.
Dr Midhat Abbas of the Gaza Ministry of Health said 1,200 Palestinians had been injured during the seven days of attacks, about half of whom were women and children.
He accused the Israeli military of deliberately targeting health facilities with airstrikes and bombing the roads surrounding al-Shifa.
“They are aimed primarily at civilians, they are the victims of this aggression,” Dr Abbas said. “[Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu he wants to save himself from prison and that is why he decided to kill Palestinian children. “
Israeli airstrikes killed 33 Palestinians in Gaza on Sunday, including 13 children, health officials in Gaza said. The attacks left the death toll in Gaza at 181, including 52 children. Israel has reported ten deaths, including two children.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army on the raids.
‘Very limited capacity’
Dr Abbas said staff were installing beds in reception areas when the hospital was filled, adding that there was a shortage of medicines and equipment as a result of the 15-year siege of Gaza by ‘Israel and the coronavirus pandemic.
“We are waiting for the patients to leave for Egypt [for medical care] because our capacity is very limited, ”Dr. Abbas told Al Jazeera.
Nurse Amal Badawi described the overcrowding as they carried more injuries.
“The hospital is full of people and relatives. It was difficult to work and carry out the necessary treatment in view of this overcrowding. The number of injured or dead is huge and they keep coming, “Badawi told Al Jazeera.
Among those killed in Sunday’s airstrikes was Dr. Ayman Abu Auf, an al-Shifa doctor, the health ministry said.
Fahad al-Haddad, an emergency medicine specialist at al-Shifa, said most of the dead brought to the hospital showed no external signs of injuries, meaning they died from the rubble that collapsed them. · Lapse while they were still alive.
Egypt has opened the Rafah border crossing a day earlier than planned to allow the crossing of students, people in need of medical treatment and other humanitarian cases, two border sources told Reuters on Sunday.
The border had been closed for Eid al-Fitr holidays and was due to reopen on Monday.
So far, Egypt has sent 16 ambulances to Gaza to pick up the victims of Israeli bombings to treat them in Egyptian hospitals, a medical source said.
The source said a bus with 95 people aboard Gaza had arrived on Sunday morning.
