The sisters Hind and Heba al-Hourani were treated in the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital on Sunday when Israel ordered everyone in the building in the middle of the night before aimed at the hospital.
“Suddenly (it felt like it) (it felt like) everyone ran and wanted to let us leave it back,” said Hind, 9, whose left leg was amputated in an earlier air raid, who had also critically wounded her sister. “We hurried on the street. We were afraid.”
Heba said that when they got on the street, they didn’t know where to go.
“We prayed on the streets, we could hardly walk or do something with our wounded legs,” said Heba. “It was a very difficult situation, very scary.”
The Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, the last large hospital, which offers critical care in the north of Gaza, was forced to close after Israeli strokes. The strike is one of the latest hits in relation to the destroyed infrastructure for Gaza health care and comes because international humanitarian organizations say that hospital residents go out without new help in the territory for more than seven weeks.
The aunt of Hind and Heba, Afaf al-Hourani, said as soon as they were instructed to evacuate, they grabbed mattresses and tried to get the wounded patients out of the building.
“The girls screamed on the streets … Hind screamed because she was in pain, so we put her on her sister’s mattress and pulled her onto the street,” said Al-Hourani.
“We asked others to help ourselves to pull them through the rubble on the streets.”
Hind, an amputator, and her sister Heba al-Hourani were among hundreds of wounded patients who were forced on Sunday overnight to evacuate the Al-Ahni-Araber-Baptist Hospital after Israel warned of beating the building. Israel claimed that it had held a Hamas command and control center without providing evidence. Hamas denies the claim.
Hospital closure means less urgent care
Al-Hourani said that other people helped them reach the red crescent moon field hospital, about 600 meters from the Al-Shifa Hospital in the city of Gaza, about a kilometer away, where they could treat themselves.
Israel said that a Hamas command and control center within the Al-Ali Hospital aimed without providing evidence was an assertion that used it in earlier strikes against hospitals in Gaza. Hamas denied the allegations.
The episcopal diocese of Jerusalem, who heads the hospital, said that the warning for evacuation came 20 minutes before the air raid. On Sunday, the international community asked to intervene in order to “stop all possible attacks on medical and humanitarian institutions”.
The Gaza Ministry of Health said a patient, a girl, died during the evacuation because the employees could not offer an urgent care.
Fadl Naeem, director of the Al-Ahni Hospital, said that her emergency room treated around 300 people a day. Naeem said that the hospital’s laboratory and X-ray departments were also closed after the attack.
He announced CBC News on Monday that there are plans to restore that could take weeks or months, but no new humanitarian deliveries have entered the Palestinian enclave, since Israel blocked the entry of auxiliary forces on March 2, how the talks in the next stage of a now broken ceasefire between Israel and Hovas were shut down.
Medical care is critical of
AFAF al-Hourani said that the conditions of her nieces deteriorated due to the lack of medicine in the Gaza. Hind and Heba were critically wounded by an Israeli air raid in Gaza city, which killed their brother at the beginning of this month.
“If the intersections were open and (Israel) the medicine would be involved in the wounded, they would not have pain,” said Al-Hourani.
An Israeli air strike has destroyed part of the Al-Ali-Arabian hospital, the last fully functional hospital in Gaza City. Witnesses said the strike destroyed the intensive care unit of the hospital.
On Friday, the President of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, told Reuters that medical care in the enclave was critical.
“We are now in a situation that I have to describe as hell on Earth … People have no access to water, electricity and food in many parts,” said Spoljaric and warned that his field hospital is expected to no longer have any care within two weeks.
Dr. Hassan Al-Shaer, medical director of the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, said that the facility received around 50 patients on Sunday who evacuated Al-Ali.
“We have a limited number of beds and a limited number of services here,” Al-Shaer told CBC News on Tuesday. “It was very difficult to receive them.”
The hospital, which was the largest medical complex and the Gaza central hospital at one point, has fewer than 100 beds for patients, from about 700 beds before the 18-month war.
UN boss “deeply alarmed” in the hospital strike
A spokesman for the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, said that he was “deeply alerted” on Sunday by Israeli forces in the Al-Ali Hospital.
“According to international humanitarian law, medical personnel and medical institutions, including hospitals, have to be respected and protected,” said the UN’s spokesman.
He said that the attack “provided a strong blast in an already destroyed health system in the (Gaza) strip”.
During the 18-month war, the Israeli military has beaten and searched hospitals several times and accused Hamas’ militants of hiding in them or using for military purposes. Hospital employees have denied the allegations and accused Israel of ruthlessly at risk of civilians and destroyed their health infrastructure.
On Tuesday, an Israeli air raid hit the northern goal of the Kuwaiti field hospital in the Muwasi area, killed a doctor and wounded nine other people.
The wounded were all patients and doctors, and two of the patients were in a critical condition after the strike, said Sabre Mohammed, a hospital spokesman.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
More than 51,000 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, say Palestinian officials. This includes more than 1,600 people since Israel ended a ceasefire and resumed his offensive last month to put Hamas under pressure to accept changes to the agreement.
The Gaza Ministry of Health does not say how many civilians or fighters were, but says that women and children make up more than half of the dead.
Israel started his attack after thousands of armed men armed by Hamas had attacked the communities in South Israel on October 7, 2023, killed 1,200 people and, according to Israeli days, kidnapped 251 as hostages. Fifty -nine hostages are still in the Gaza, which is believed to be alive.
