Director of Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya reports that 45 patients are in urgent need of surgical intervention. Due to a lack of supplies and an overwhelming number of patients, the hospital in northern Gaza has gone out of service. Video footage shows wounded Palestinians in the hospital’s hallways, and the hospital is currently at capacity with 500 patients, despite having a capacity of 140 patients.
The hospital director, Atef al-Kahlout, stressed that the hospital’s departments are unable to carry out their work and that there is a critical shortage of supplies, with patients in need of intensive care and medication. He called on ambulances not to bring any more wounded people to the facility due to the lack of capacity.
Al-Kahlout also mentioned that the hospital has been sheltering hundreds of displaced people who sought refuge there and highlighted that the hospital had been struck multiple times by Israeli forces.
Israel’s military has alleged that the hospital is used to hide an underground command and control centre for Hamas, a claim which has been refuted by Palestinian officials and the Indonesian group that funds the hospital. The Israeli army has also published videos claiming to show a Hamas tunnel shaft and a vehicle containing a large number of weapons at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital complex.
The situation is dire for the thousands of civilians trapped at al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex, amid an ongoing Israeli raid. The United States has expressed confidence in its intelligence assessment that Hamas has been using the hospital as a command and control node and storage facility, a claim that Hamas has denied.