Gaza hospitals warn that thousands could die if supplies run out as Israeli ground offensive looms

DEIR EL-BALAH – Medics in Gaza warned Sunday that thousands could die if hospitals full of wounded other folks run out of gas and elementary supplies, as civilians struggled to search out food, water and protection forward of an anticipated Israeli ground offensive within the conflict sparked by means of Hamas’ fatal assault ultimate week.

Israeli forces, supported by means of a rising deployment of U.S. warships within the area, situated themselves alongside Gaza’s border and drilled for what Israel mentioned can be a vast marketing campaign to dismantle the militant staff. Every week of blistering airstrikes have demolished complete neighborhoods however didn’t stem militant rocket hearth into Israel.

The Gaza Health Ministry mentioned 2,329 Palestinians were killed because the preventing erupted, greater than within the 2014 Gaza conflict, which lasted over six weeks. That makes this the deadliest of the 5 Gaza wars for either side. More than 1,300 Israelis were killed, the majority of them civilians killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault. This is the deadliest conflict for Israel because the 1973 battle with Egypt and Syria.

Israel dropped leaflets over Gaza City within the north and renewed warnings on social media, ordering greater than 1 million Palestinians — virtually part the territory’s inhabitants — to move south. The army says it is making an attempt to transparent away civilians forward of a significant marketing campaign towards Hamas militants within the north, together with in what it mentioned have been underground hideouts in Gaza City. Hamas steered other folks to stick of their houses.

The army mentioned Sunday that it will chorus from focused on a unmarried direction south from 10 a.m. to one p.m., once more urging Palestinians to go away the north en masse. The army introduced two corridors and an extended window the day ahead of. It says masses of thousands have already fled south.

Hezbollah combatants in Lebanon in the meantime fired an anti-tank missile towards an Israeli military post and Israel answered with artillery hearth. Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue provider mentioned a 40-year-old guy used to be killed, with out giving his nationality. Israel later closed off spaces as much as 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the border and ordered civilians inside of 2 kilometers to refuge in secure rooms.

Israel and Hezbollah, which fought a devastating conflict in 2006, have traded hearth alongside the border a number of instances because the get started of the most recent Gaza conflict.

The U.N. and help teams have mentioned that the mass exodus inside of Gaza, in conjunction with Israel’s whole siege of the 40-kilometer-long (25-mile-long) coastal territory, would purpose untold human struggling.

The World Health Organization mentioned the evacuation “could be tantamount to a death sentence” for the greater than 2,000 sufferers in northern hospitals, together with newborns in incubators and other folks in in depth care. Gaza’s hospitals are anticipated to run out of generator gas inside of two days, consistent with the U.N., which mentioned that that would endanger the lives of thousands of sufferers.

In Nasser Hospital within the southern the city of Khan Younis, Gaza’s 2nd greatest after al-Shifa, in depth care rooms are full of wounded sufferers, maximum of them kids under the age of 3. Hundreds of other folks with critical blast accidents have come to the clinic, the place gas is predicted to run out by means of Monday, mentioned Dr. Mohammed Qandeel, a specialist on the important care complicated.

There are 35 sufferers within the ICU that rely on ventilators to stick alive and any other 60 on dialysis. If gas runs out, “it means the whole health system will be shut down, the services will be off,” he mentioned.

“We we are talking about another catastrophe, another war crime, a historical tragedy,” he said, as children moaned in pain in the background. “All these patients are in danger of death if the electricity is cut off,” he mentioned.

In the Kamal Alwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the head of paediatrics, said the hospital did not evacuate despite the Israeli order because there was no way to move patients elsewhere without risking their lives. There are seven newborns in the ICU hooked up to ventilators, he said. “We cannot evacuate, it would mean their death and other patients under our care.”

And wounded patients keep coming in with severed limbs, severe burns and other life-threatening injuries. “It’s frightening,” he said.

Gaza was already in a humanitarian crisis due to a growing shortage of water and medical supplies caused by the Israeli siege, which has also forced the enclave’s sole electrical plant to shut down. With some bakeries closing, residents said they were unable to buy bread.

The U.S. has been trying to broker a deal to reopen Egypt’s Rafah crossing with Gaza to allow Americans and other foreigners to leave and humanitarian aid amassed on the Egyptian side to be brought in. The crossing, which was closed because of airstrikes early in the war, has yet to reopen.

Hundreds of relatives of the estimated 150 people captured by Hamas in Israel and taken to Gaza meanwhile gathered outside the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, demanding their release.

“This is my cry out to the world: Please help bring my family, my wife and three kids,” said Avihai Brodtz of Kfar Azza. Many expressed anger toward the government, saying they still have no information about their loved ones.

In a televised address Saturday night, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, accused Hamas of trying to use civilians as human shields.

“We are going to attack Gaza City very broadly soon,” he said, without giving a timetable for the attack.

When asked at a press briefing whether Israel would treat civilians who stay in the north as combatants, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, another army spokesman, said: “That’s why we’ve encouraged people not involved with Hamas to move south.”

The military said Sunday an airstrike in southern Gaza had killed a Hamas commander blamed for the killings at Nirim, one of several communities Hamas had attacked in southern Israel. Israel said it struck over 100 military targets overnight, including command centers and rocket launchers.

Israel has called up some 360,000 military reserves and massed troops and tanks along the border with Gaza. Israelis living near the Gaza border, including residents of the town of Sderot, continued to be evacuated. Militants in Gaza have fired over 5,500 rockets since the hostilities erupted, many reaching reaching deep into Israel, as Israeli warplanes pound Gaza.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said late Saturday that the U.S. was moving a second carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the eastern Mediterranean, in a show of force meant to deter any allies of Hamas, such as Iran or Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, from seeking to widen the war.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meanwhile met with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh as the Biden administration scrambles to prevent a wider regional conflict. Prince Mohammed is the sixth Arab leader Blinken has met since he arrived in the Middle East Thursday.

Hamas remained defiant. In a televised speech Saturday, Ismail Haniyeh, a top official based abroad, said that “all the massacres” will not break the Palestinian people.

Hamas spokesperson Jihad Taha informed The Associated Press in Beirut that Israel “does not dare to fight a ground battle,” because of the captives. He alluded to the possible entry of Hezbollah and other regional players in the battle should Israel launch a ground invasion but declined to say whether they had made any concrete commitments.

An Israeli airstrike near the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least 27 people and wounded another 80, Gaza health authorities said.

Most of the victims were women and children, the authorities said. Doctors from Kamal Edwan Hospital shared footage of charred and disfigured bodies.

It was not clear how many Palestinians remained in northern Gaza by Saturday afternoon, said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. An estimated 1 million people have been displaced in Gaza in one week, she said.

At Gaza City’s main hospital, al-Shifa, a crowd of men, women and children that medical officials estimated at 35,000 crammed into the hospital’s lobby and bloodied hallways and under the trees on the hospital grounds, hoping the facility would be spared in the coming attack.

“People think this is the only safe space after their homes were destroyed and they were forced to flee,” mentioned Dr. Medhat Abbas, a Health Ministry respectable.

Basic prerequisites, including water, have been operating out on account of the siege, which Israel has mentioned will handiest be lifted when the captives are returned.

The Israeli army’s evacuation order calls for the territory’s entire population cram into the southern part of Gaza as Israel continues moves, together with within the south. The Hamas communications administrative center mentioned Israel has destroyed over 7,000 housing gadgets up to now.

Al-Shifa clinic used to be receiving masses of wounded each hour and had used up 95% of its scientific supplies, clinic director Mohammad Abu Selim mentioned. Water is scarce and the gas powering its turbines is dwindling.

“The situation inside the hospital is miserable in every sense of the word,” he mentioned. “The operating rooms don’t stop.”

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Kullab reported from Baghdad, Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Abby Sewell in Beirut and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this document.