Hamas says it has evacuated around 100 patients from the Indonesian hospital in Gaza

“AThere are still 500 patients in the hospital and we are working with the ICRC to take them to the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes in the south of the Gaza Strip, said the Islamist group’s Health Ministry spokesman, Ashraf al-Qidreh. .

“Another 100 patients will be evacuated overnight and then distributed to different hospitals in the south,” he added.

According to the same source, the attack on the Indonesian hospital, located near Jabalia, in the north of the Gaza Strip, killed at least 12 people and caused numerous injuries.

Israeli forces have attacked several hospitals in recent weeks, arguing that Hamas militants were hiding in these facilities, although the most relevant was the siege of al-Shifa hospital last week, the largest in the Gaza Strip.

Israel claimed that Hamas had its main command center in the basement of that hospital and on Sunday presented evidence that allegedly supports this thesis, showing 55 meters of a fortified underground tunnel.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also warned today that the hospital situation in Gaza is “catastrophic”, with most hospitals out of operation.

“We now have 1.7 million displaced people, so we have double or triple the population (in southern Gaza) using a third of the hospital beds in less than a third of the available hospitals,” said the executive director of the Program of WHO Health Emergencies, Michael Ryan, in a briefing held at the UN headquarters in New York, in which he participated via videoconference from Geneva.

“Even if we had a ceasefire tomorrow morning, we would still have a huge problem on our hands,” he added.

Ryan said health services in the Gaza Strip are no longer able to provide care for more complex medical cases — including the majority of cancer patients and kidney dialysis patients — and will likely be overwhelmed with about 5,500 births expected in the next month.

The Islamist movement Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israel on October 7, leaving more than 1,200 people dead and 240 hostages.

In response, Israel declared war on Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and is classified as terrorist by the EU and the United States, bombing several of the group’s infrastructures in Gaza and imposing a total siege on the territory, cutting off water supplies. fuel and electricity.

The UN indicated that more than two-thirds of the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip were displaced by the war, with the majority fleeing to the south.

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