Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital ‘out of service’, overwhelmed with wounded

Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital ‘out of service’, overwhelmed with wounded


The Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza has gone “completely out of operation” due to a lack of supplies and an overwhelming number of patients during Israel’s assault on the besieged area, hospital director Atef al-Kahlout said.

Footage from the hospital in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip shows wounded Palestinians lining the facility’s hallways and lying on their stomachs amid pools of blood.

“We cannot provide any more services… we cannot offer beds to patients,” al-Kahlout told Al Jazeera on Thursday.

While the hospital has a capacity of 140 patients, al-Kahlout said there are currently about 500 patients in the hospital.

He said 45 patients “urgently require surgical intervention” and asked ambulances “not to bring any more injured people to the facility” due to a lack of capacity.

He says the hospital’s departments are “unable to carry out their jobs.” Health staff at the hospital cited a critical shortage of supplies.

“We don’t have any beds,” a health worker told Al Jazeera during a tour of the building.

“This person needs an intensive care unit,” he added, pointing to a young man lying on the floor being tended to by a nurse.

“And [here]“,” he says, pointing to another patient with an amputated leg, “we don’t have any medication.”

“We are taking in the wounded from Wadi Gaza to Beit Hanoon,” he says, “some have been here for ten days.”

Palestinians wounded in Israeli attacks lie on the floor of the Indonesian hospital after al-Shifa Hospital was closed as part of Israel’s ground offensive in the northern Gaza Strip, November 16, 2023 [FadiAlwhidi/Reuters]

Israeli authorities say nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been injured since Israel began its assault on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people.

According to Palestinian health authorities, more than 11,400 people were killed in the Israeli attack on Gaza, including more than 4,600 children. Israel has it too Highly limited supply of water, food, Electricity and fuelwith aid agencies warning of a humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave.

“Medical teams [at the Indonesian hospital] Some patients had to amputate [body parts] due to rotting of organs,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from Khan Younis, adding that the hospital was unable to move the injured elsewhere.

“All hospitals in Gaza City and the north have ceased operations,” said director al-Kahlout.

The Indonesian hospital near the Jabalia refugee camp – the largest in Gaza – also houses hundreds of displaced people who sought shelter there.

According to Human Rights Watch, the area around the hospital was attacked by Israeli forces on multiple occasions, with at least two civilians killed in those attacks between October 7 and October 28.

The Israeli military has claimed that the Indonesian hospital is being used to “hide an underground command and control center” for Hamas. Palestinian officials and the Indonesian group that funds the hospital have denied the claims.

Meanwhile, concern is growing for the thousands of civilians trapped here al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex, amid an ongoing Israeli raid. Israel says the hospital houses a Hamas command center, a claim the group has denied.

White House spokesman John Kirby said Thursday that the United States was “confident by our own intelligence assessment” that Hamas had used the hospital “as a command and control hub and most likely also as a storage facility.”

Late Thursday, the Israeli army released videos purporting to show a Hamas tunnel shaft and a vehicle “containing a large number of weapons” discovered at the al-Shifa hospital complex in Gaza.



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