’24 die at Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital in 2 days due to power cuts,’ says Hamas health ministry

GAZA CITY: The Hamas-controlled health ministry said Friday that 24 patients at a hospital in war-torn Gaza had died within 48 hours due to power outages, as Israeli forces searched the complex for Hamas hideouts.

The announcement came shortly after Israel agreed to a US request to allow two fuel trucks a day into Gaza, following a UN warning that the shortages had halted aid deliveries and put people at risk of starvation.

The situation was dire at the Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza, which Israel’s army said it was searching for a third day for suspected hideouts of fighters from the Islamist movement’s armed wing.

Hamas rejects an Israeli charge that it has a command centre at the hospital, where thousands of people, including wounded patients and premature babies, are believed to be inside. The hospital also denies the claim.

Israel has vowed to “crush” Hamas in response to the group’s October 7 attack, when it broke through Gaza’s militarised border to kill about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and take about 240 hostage, according to Israeli officials.

The army’s air and ground campaign has killed about 11,500 people, including thousands of children, according to Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007.

“Twenty-four patients… have died over the last 48 hours” at Al-Shifa hospital “as vital medical equipment has stopped functioning because of the power outage”, Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.

In response to a US request, Israel’s war cabinet unanimously decided to allow “the entry of two diesel fuel tankers per day for the needs of the UN to support water and sewer infrastructure… provided that it does not reach Hamas”, Israeli officials said.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) earlier said its aid trucks were unable to enter Gaza from Egypt for a second straight day due to the lack of fuel and a near-total communications blackout.

‘Anxiety and panic’
UNRWA said it would be unable to “manage or coordinate humanitarian convoys” from Friday because of the telecommunications outage.

“The situation in Al-Shifa is catastrophic” for patients, displaced people and health workers who are crammed inside without electricity, water and food, the hospital’s director, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, told AFP on the phone later during a brief restoration of communications.

Israel has defended its Al-Shifa operation, with the military saying it found rifles, ammunition, explosives and the entrance to a tunnel shaft at the hospital complex.

Its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, alleged hostages may even have been held at the medical facility.

“We had strong indications that they were held in the Shifa Hospital, which is one of the reasons we entered the hospital,” he told “CBS Evening News”.

“If they were, they were taken out,” he said.

Israel said its forces were searching Al-Shifa “one building at a time”.

The military also said troops had recovered the remains of kidnapped woman soldier Noa Marciano, 19, “from a structure adjacent to Al-Shifa hospital”.

It had confirmed her death this week, without giving the cause. Hamas said she had been killed in Israeli bombing.

On Thursday the army said soldiers near Al-Shifa found the body of another hostage. Yehudit Weiss, 65, who had been kidnapped from the kibbutz community of Beeri.