… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Tag: hospitals

  • Newborns in Gaza Dying From Preventable Causes Due to Israeli Siege: Oxfam

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    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    “Oxfam is urgently calling for a full cease-fire and unimpeded humanitarian access,” said the group, explaining that a four-day pause in fighting is not sufficient.

    Humanitarian workers in Gaza on Thursday said their daily experiences struggling to take care of pregnant people and babies demonstrate why a four-day pause in fighting is far from sufficient to save the lives of the blockaded enclave’s most vulnerable residents, including newborns who have begun to die from preventable causes.

    As Israel’s blockade continues to keep Gaza authorities from providing clean water, food, sanitation, and heat to homes and hospitals, babies aged three months and younger “are dying of diarrhea, hypothermia, dehydration, and infection,” said Oxfam International.

    Juzoor, an organization partnering with Oxfam in northern Gaza, said premature births have increased by 25-30% since October 7 when Israel began its bombardment of Gaza in retaliation for an attack by Hamas.

    The group has been supporting about 500 pregnant women in 13 shelters—where a total of 35,000 people are living—and many have gone into labor prematurely as they have the ongoing trauma of “walking long distances in search of safety, running away from bombs, and being crowded into shelters with squalid conditions.”

    Humanitarian workers are struggling to adequately care for thousands of people who have taken refuge in shelters, with waste piling up due to a lack of sanitation services and up to 600 people sharing one toilet.

    Sally Abi Khalil, Middle East regional director for Oxfam, said the fact that the crisis has reached a stage where babies are dying of preventable illnesses is “abhorrent.”

    “Last month we lost at least one baby in every shelter, it’s heartbreaking,” said Umaiyeh Khammash, director of Juzoor. “Access to hospitals is extremely dangerous and virtually impossible, so many women are having to give birth with little or no maternity support in shelters.”

    As Common Dreams has reported, more than 50,000 Gaza residents are facing Israel’s onslaught while pregnant, and more than 5,500 are expected to give birth within a month. Juzoor estimates that 30% of women will face pregnancy complications that require extra medical attention, putting their babies at greater risk—particularly in the first 28 days of life, when newborns are most vulnerable.

    Khammash expressed fear that the group will soon be entirely out of food for residents.

    “The absence of fuel has affected hospitals in the north and the shelters where we operate,” he said. “There is no light, there is no heat. Now winter is coming and it’s cold. It is really a disaster for everyone, but especially for expectant mothers.”

    Some women have given birth in recent weeks in repurposed classrooms surrounded by dozens of refugees, without qualified medical personnel present or any capacity for providing “basic hygiene,” Khalil said.

    “I don’t think there is anyone anywhere in the world that would disagree that is simply inhumane,” she added.

    Oxfam is working to provide the Juzoor shelters with hygiene kits and food, while 60 health professionals have been mobilized to work with thousands of displaced people.

    “But the ongoing violence, siege, and acute shortages of fuel and clean water severely hinder these efforts,” said Oxfam as it called on officials to go further than negotiating only a four-day “humanitarian pause.”

    “Oxfam is urgently calling for a full cease-fire and unimpeded humanitarian access in order to restore vital services and provide desperately needed medical support particularly to pregnant women and newborn babies,” said the group.

    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

  • Israel Orders Palestinians to Flee Parts of Southern Gaza, Continues Attacks on Hospitals

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    Original article republished from DEMOCRACY NOW! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

    Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in a 41st consecutive day of unrelenting attacks by Israel’s military on the Gaza Strip. Overnight, Israel’s Air Force dropped leaflets over parts of the southern city of Khan Younis ordering people to leave their homes and shelters “for their own safety.” Many are being expelled for a second time, after Israel last month ordered more than a million Palestinians to leave their homes in northern Gaza.

    On Wednesday, Israeli authorities allowed the first shipment of fuel into the Gaza Strip since early October. The U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says just over 6,000 gallons of fuel — half a tanker truck’s worth — was allowed to cross from Egypt. That’s just 9% of what UNRWA says is needed daily to sustain life-saving activities. Israel is not allowing the fuel to be used in hospitals or to power water and sewage pumps. 

    The U.N.’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, said outbreaks of disease and hunger in Gaza now appear “inevitable.” His remarks came amid a worsening humanitarian catastrophe at Gaza’s largest hospital, the Al-Shifa medical complex, which is being occupied by Israel’s army. Thousands of patients, medical workers and displaced Palestinians remain trapped inside the hospital and unable to leave. Medical workers report Israeli attacks have severely damaged Al-Shifa’s main surgery building, and about 200 people were reportedly blindfolded by Israeli troops and led away to interrogations. The World Health Organization’s Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says 26 out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are now closed due to damage from Israeli strikes or because they have run out of fuel.

    Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “Israel’s military incursion into Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is totally unacceptable. Hospitals are not battlegrounds.”

    Original article republished from DEMOCRACY NOW! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

  • Amid War Crimes Charges, Human Rights Watch Says Israel Must ‘End Attacks on Hospitals’

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    Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Wounded people receive treatment at the Aqsa Indonesia Hospital after an Israeli attack on the Jibalia refugee camp on November 13, 2023. (Photo: Fadi Alwhidi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “Israel’s broad-based attack on Gaza’s healthcare system is an attack on the sick and the injured, on babies in incubators, on pregnant people, on cancer patients. These actions need to be investigated as war crimes.”

    Human Rights Watch on Tuesday demanded that the Israeli government immediately cease its deadly attacks on Gaza’s hospitals, arguing they’re part of a far-reaching and unlawful assault on the territory’s crumbling healthcare system.

    In a new report, HRW examines the impacts of the Israeli bombing campaign, ground invasion, and siege on Gaza’s medical personnel and facilities, a majority of which have stopped functioning due to airstrike damage or lack of critical supplies, from fuel to anesthetics.

    “Israel’s repeated attacks damaging hospitals and harming healthcare workers, already hard hit by an unlawful blockade, have devastated Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure,” said A. Kayum Ahmed, special adviser on the right to health at Human Rights Watch. “The strikes on hospitals have killed hundreds of people and put many patients at grave risk because they’re unable to receive proper medical care.”

    Over the past week, Israeli forces have surrounded and intensified their bombardment of several hospitals in northern Gaza including al-Shifa, the enclave’s largest medical facility. Israel has also bombed ambulances and people desperately attempting to flee hospitals as they’ve come under attack.

    “On November 3, the Israeli military struck a marked ambulance just outside of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital,” HRW said. “Video footage and photographs taken shortly after the strike and verified by Human Rights Watch show a woman on a stretcher in the ambulance and at least 21 dead or injured people in the area surrounding the ambulance, including at least 5 children.”

    “An IDF spokesperson said in a televised interview that day: ‘Our forces saw terrorists using ambulances as a vehicle to move around. They perceived a threat and accordingly we struck that ambulance,’” the group added. “Human Rights Watch did not find evidence that the ambulance was being used for military purposes.”

    HRW similarly questioned Israeli assertions that Hamas is using Gaza’s hospitals, including al-Shifa, for military operations.

    Targeting hospitals is a war crime under international law, but medical facilities can lose their protected status if they’re used to commit an “act harmful to the enemy,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

    HRW argued that Tuesday that “no evidence put forward” by the Israeli government thus far “would justify depriving hospitals and ambulances of their protected status under international humanitarian law.”

    “When a journalist at a news conference showing video footage of damage to the Qatar Hospital sought additional information to verify voice recordings and images presented, the Israeli spokesperson said, ‘Our strikes are based on intelligence,’” HRW said. “Even if accurate, Israel has not demonstrated that the ensuing hospital attacks were proportionate.”

    The group said Israel “should end attacks on hospitals” and urged the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the International Criminal Court to investigate.

    “Israel’s broad-based attack on Gaza’s healthcare system is an attack on the sick and the injured, on babies in incubators, on pregnant people, on cancer patients,” said Ahmed. “These actions need to be investigated as war crimes.”

    The new analysis came amid horrific reports of the impact that Israel’s assault is having on healthcare workers, patients, and displaced people seeking refuge from near-constant airstrikes.

    Reuters reported that people trapped inside al-Shifa Hospital “plan to start burying bodies within the hospital compound” on Tuesday “because the situation has become untenable.” The World Health Organization said over the weekend that the facility is “not functioning as a hospital anymore” due to power outages and a lack of supplies, which have caused the deaths of a number of patients—including premature babies.

    Dr. Ahmed Al Mokhallalati, a surgeon at al-Shifa, told Reuters that “the bodies were generating an unbearable stench and posing a risk of infection.”

    “Unfortunately there is no approval from the Israelis to even bury the bodies within the hospital area,” he said. “Today … civilians started digging within the hospital to try and bury the bodies on their own responsibility without any arrangements by the Israeli side. Burying 120 bodies needs a lot of equipment, it can’t be by hand efforts and by single-person efforts. It will take hours and hours to be able to bury all these bodies.”

    Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said that on Tuesday morning, “bullets were fired into one of three MSF premises located near al-Shifa hospital and sheltering MSF staff and their families—over 100 people, including 65 children, who ran out of food last night.”

    “Thousands of civilians, medical staff, and patients are currently trapped in hospitals and other locations under fire in Gaza City; they must be protected and afforded safe passage if they wish to leave,” the group added. “Above that, there must be a total and immediate cease-fire.”

    Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

  • ‘Can You Hear the Screams?’ Physician Says Western Leaders Complicit in Israeli Attacks on Gaza Hospitals

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    Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    An injured toddler cries as she awaits treatment at the emergency ward of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 5, 2023. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

    “When are you going to stop this?” Dr. Mads Gilbert asked U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of European nations.

    A Norwegian physician who has volunteered in Gaza for decades said Friday that Western leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, are complicit in Israel’s intensifying assault on the Palestinian enclave’s hospitals, which are overwhelmed with airstrike victims and displaced people seeking refuge.

    In a video message posted to social media as Israeli forces bombarded al-Shifa—Gaza’s largest hospital—and other medical facilities, Dr. Mads Gilbert asked, “Can you hear the screams from innocent people, refugees sheltering, trying to find a safe place, being bombed by the Israeli attack forces this morning inside the hospital, hospitals that are the temples of humanity and protection?”

    “When are you going to stop this?” Gilbert added, with audio of screams from Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital playing in the background. “You’re all complicit.”

    Gilbert’s plea for immediate action from world leaders who are supporting and arming Israel’s military came as Israeli forces surrounded al-Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza, claiming that Hamas is using the facilities as command centers—an assertion that hospital directors have denied.

    Targeting hospitals is a war crime under international law.

    Israeli airstrikes and sniper fire on Gaza hospitals have forced thousands of people who were sheltering at the facilities to flee, but many others “remain trapped inside,” the U.K.-based humanitarian group Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said Saturday.

    The charity said it has heard “chilling testimony from inside Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa,” including reports that “the intensive care unit has been bombed and damaged.”

    “Staff moving between buildings have been shot at and critically wounded,” said MAP, which is calling for a cease-fire. “Those who have tried to flee have come under fire, and lie dead or wounded in the street as rescue is impossible. With the mortuary shut down, a hundred bodies are piled up and cannot be buried.”

    “Power has gone out, and staff are having to hand ventilate critically ill patients to keep them alive,” the group continued. “At least one patient in intensive care has already died. Babies in the neonatal intensive care unit which MAP has supported over many years are beginning to die from lack of oxygen. More will die soon unless the power supply is restored. Day after day, week after week, we have been warning of catastrophic consequences if world leaders fail to protect healthcare in Gaza. Our worst fears are coming true.”

    Doctors Without Borders, which has been providing emergency assistance in the Gaza Strip, offered a similarly harrowing account.

    “We are currently unable to contact any of our staff inside al-Shifa, and we are extremely concerned about the safety of patients and the medical staff,” the group said late Friday. “Patients are still in the hospital, some in critical condition and unable to move.”

    Mohammed Obeid, a Doctors Without Borders physician at al-Shifa, said that “there is a patient who needs surgery. There is a patient who’s already asleep in our department. We cannot evacuate ourselves and [leave] these people inside. As a doctor, I swear to help the people who need help.”

    Early Saturday, the group wrote on social media that its staff “are witnessing people being shot at as they attempt to flee the al-Shifa hospital.”

    Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

  • Hundreds of Thousands Join London March to Demand ‘Cease-Fire Now’ in Gaza

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    Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    People take part in the National March for Palestine in London on Saturday November 11, 2023.  (Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Images via Getty Images)

    “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians,” demonstrators chanted at Saturday’s march, described as one of the largest political protests in U.K. history.

    Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London on Saturday to demand an immediate cease-fire in Gaza as Israeli forces ramped up their aerial and ground assault on the Palestinian enclave’s hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, intensifying the territory’s humanitarian crisis.

    Described as one of the largest political demonstrations in U.K. history, the march moved ahead despite criticism from British Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who suggested earlier in the week that the protest should have been banned by London police given that it coincided with Armistice Day. Braverman accused the police of giving favorable treatment to “pro-Palestinian mobs.”

    “I am horrified by the tone, language, and incitement our own government is using to whip up hatred against its own citizens—citizens who are standing up in solidarity with the besieged and bombed citizens of Gaza,” British Army veteran and march participant Nadia Mitchell wrote for OpenDemocracy. “Personally, I cannot think of a more appropriate day to demand a cease-fire than on the day we remember the mother of all cease-fires, to remember and honor those who sacrificed their lives in pursuit of peace and an end to war.”

    Some U.K. lawmakers, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Labour MP John McDonnell, joined Saturday’s march alongside hundreds of thousands of peace activists, union members, and people of all faiths.

    “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians,” demonstrators chanted.

    (Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)

    Reuters reported that “police said far-right groups opposing the march were present in central London in ‘significant numbers,’ leading to skirmishes with officers near the Cenotaph war memorial, close to the Houses of Parliament and in Westminster.”

    “Officers in riot gear sought to contain the far-right protesters, some of whom threw bottles at them, and police vehicles sped around the city to respond to reports of tensions in the streets,” the outlet added.

    Participants in the mass demonstration, meanwhile, marched from London’s Hyde Park to the U.S. Embassy to protest the Biden administration’s unwavering military and political support for the Israeli government as the death toll in Gaza continues to climb.

    The head of the World Health Organization told the United Nations Security Council on Friday that Israel’s bombing and siege are killing one child on average every 10 minutes in Gaza.

    “Nowhere and no one is safe,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

    Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, deputy medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, toldThe Washington Post on Saturday that hospitals in northern Gaza have become “a graveyard” due to mounting Israeli attacks.

    Medical workers at al-Nasr pediatric hospital were forced to leave babies in incubators behind as they evacuated south, Abu Mughaisib said.

    “The medical staff evacuated because of the shelling on the pediatric hospital, and they couldn’t save the babies to take them out, so they left five babies alone in the intensive care on the machines and the ventilators,” he told the newspaper. “That’s the situation: leaving babies now alone on the ventilators.”

    (Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Images via Getty Images)

    Saturday’s march was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Stop the War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and other advocacy groups.

    “We march to call for an end to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and a #CeasefireNOW,” PSC director Ben Jamal wrote on social media. “We march in respect of the rights of all to live in freedom and with dignity.”

    The demonstration is part of a growing international movement supporting a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip as Western leaders, including Sunak and U.S. President Joe Biden, refuse to demand an end to Israel’s siege and relentless bombing campaign.

    Earlier this week, as Israeli forces encircled northern Gaza, Biden told reporters that there is “no possibility” of a cease-fire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly rejected a proposed five-day cease-fire in exchange for the release of some of the hostages held by Hamas.

    (Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)

    Video footage of Saturday’s march shows the streets of central London packed with demonstrators expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza and demanding an end to Israel’s assault, which began after a deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel last month.

    An estimated 300,000 people took part in Saturday’s march, according to London authorities.

    “This footage shows the true will of the British people,” wrote Ahmed Alnaouq, a London-based Palestinian journalist and co-founder of the nonprofit We Are Not Numbers. “Hundreds of thousands are protesting peacefully despite rounds of vicious smear campaigns and intimidation. “All say in one word: CEASE-FIRE NOW!”

    Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).