Doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza say they are doing everything they can to try and keep 36 premature babies alive.
Hospital staff had to take the infants out of the incubators, making the situation dire, Ahmed Mokhallalati, Head of the Plastic Surgery department at the hospital, told ABC News Sunday. As ABC News reported earlier Sunday, a missile struck nearby and shut down the medical facility’s backup generator, according to a doctor working at the hospital.
“The neo-nates — they are the ones we are afraid will be dying one by one as we were pushed to move them outside of the incubator area,” Mokhallalati said.
On Sunday evening, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that Hamas is preventing the rescue of these babies.
“The hospital also requested to consider assistance with safely evacuating the premature babies. We also answered this request and are ready to help. Hamas leadership, alongside the Hamas Ministry of Health, is preventing this and placing pressure on the Shifa hospital [not to accept our help],” Hagari said. “If the hospital requests, we will assist them with fuel and with evacuating the premature babies. The fuel is for essential systems only and the evacuation of the babies will be to another hospital. Our communication with the Shifa Hospital will continue.”
When asked why Al-Shifa Hospital didn’t take 300 liters of fuel offered by the IDF, he said because the number, compared to what they need daily, which is 10,000 liters, wouldn’t amount to more than an hour of power.
The staff at Al-Shifa also calculated it was not worth the risk, with doctors reporting on Saturday that those who had tried to flee the hospital had been fired on.
“We feel it would be unsafe to get these 300 liters,” a hospital worker said.
The director of the Surgical Hospital at Al-Shifa, Dr. Nidal Abuhadrous, is calling for the ICRC to give hospital staff and patients safe passage out of the complex.
–ABC News’ Zoe Magee, Matt Gutman and Sami Zayara