Violent fighting around hospitals in Gaza

The situation is becoming increasingly dramatic in the hospitals located in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, where two premature babies born in an intensive care unit died yesterday, Saturday, due to lack of electricity, according to the Médecins Sans Frontières, amid fierce fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas militants.

Arab and Muslim leaders have called for a ceasefire, a demand also made by hundreds of thousands of protesters in Europe, against a backdrop of concerns that the war will spread and the escalation in violence between Hezbollah and Israel, who exchange daily fire at the border.

Today, the 37th day of the war triggered by the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli territory on October 7, 20 out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are “out of order,” according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesuss, expressed grave concern in the early hours of the morning as his services “lost contact” with staff at the Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the largest in the entire Palestinian enclave, which has been the target of “repeated attacks”.