Gaza Hospitals in 'Complete Chaos' Treating Civilians amid 'Crisis' Situation: Reports

A doctor at Nasser Hospital told NBC News that most intensive care beds there are “occupied by children under 10” years old

Hospitals in Gaza are overcrowded, running out of supplies and in “complete chaos” as they try to treat civilians amid the war between Israel and Hamas, according to reports. After Hamas’ deadly attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, subsequent Israeli airstrikes in Gaza and Israel’s call to evacuate 1.1 million civilians in Gaza City, local hospitals are struggling with an excess of patients, doctors told ABC News and NBC News.

Plastic surgeon Dr. Mohamed Ziara described the scene at Dar Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, as “total chaos,” noting that “tens of thousands” of injured people were still arriving since Friday, and “there is nowhere to put a foot ” in the hospital, writes NBC News.

At Nasser Hospital, which is the second largest in Gaza City, Dr. Mohammed Qandil told NBC News that the site opened “tents” outside the hospital to treat more patients and that the hospital eventually had to decide “if these tents they must be for critical patients, patients after surgery or patients who will leave after the end of treatment.”

“This is like a crisis of humanity,” Qandil said, adding that medical supplies are low and doctors must decide which patients need ventilators the most.

“We are treating civilians – most intensive care beds are now occupied by children under 10,” he said.

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Destroyed buildings in Gaza after airstrikes on October 12, 2023.

Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty

Qandil also told the outlet that fuel was low and internet access was at risk, potentially putting the hospital at risk.

“Even in the next few hours, we could lose the last supply of fuel, so the hospital will be completely shut down,” he told NBC. “And then we’ll even lose the wifi connection, which is very weak, so we’ll be completely cut off from the world.”

Another doctor at Dar Al-Shifa Hospital, Dr. Ahmad Almoqadam, told ABC News this week that the hospital is short of water, medicine and blood for transfusions. The lack of medical supplies and gauze, Almoqadam told the paper, “will endanger the patient’s health.”

Some patients are without hospital beds and some locals are also sheltering in the hospital because their homes have been destroyed, Almoqadam said, adding that he too is homeless after finding it destroyed on Wednesday.

“There are more and more people and more and more injured people and they need medical help for surgeries or orthopedic interventions or interventions for various explosive injuries and traumas and various people who are injured,” Almoqadam added. “There is no discrimination in the types of people.”

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On Thursday, the World Health Organization said Gaza’s local hospitals were at “breaking point”, with fuel “running low”, medical supplies lacking and a focus on “emergency life-saving care”, affecting those who need other “basic health service”.

The WHO also said it had documented 34 “health care attacks in Gaza since last Saturday,” killing 11 health workers, injuring 16 and damaging 19 health facilities and 20 ambulances.

This week, the Associated Press reported that Al Shifa’s mortuary, which usually holds 30 bodies at a time, was overflowing on Thursday, with bodies stacked on top of each other, some in the parking lot, as a nurse called the place a “graveyard.”

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) told ABC News this week that many of its patients in clinics in Gaza City are children with “most of the injured in Gaza being women and children, as they are the ones most often in the houses that are being destroyed in airstrikes,” said the project’s deputy coordinator in Gaza, Ayman Al-Djaroucha.

Palestinians inspect a destroyed building on October 14 after Israeli airstrikes.

Abed Rahim Khatib/image alliance via Getty

“We are talking about more than a million human beings,” MSF said in a statement posted on its website on Friday, referring to the evacuation call. “‘Unprecedented’ doesn’t even cover the medical humanitarian impact of this. Gaza is razed to the ground, thousands of people are dying. This must stop immediately. We condemn Israel’s request in the strongest possible terms.”

On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces issued a press release calling for “the evacuation of all Gaza City civilians from their homes to the south for their own safety and protection and relocation to the area south of Wadi Gaza.”

“The terrorist organization Hamas has waged war against the State of Israel and Gaza City is an area where military operations are taking place,” the IDF said in a statement. “This evacuation is for your own safety.”

The IDF further said that Hamas terrorists in the city are hiding in tunnels under houses and in buildings with innocent civilians, urging residents to “distance themselves” from Hamas members “who use you as human shields”.

Meanwhile, Hamas dismissed the Israeli military’s warning to evacuate and urged people to stay in Gaza. The group said, according to The Washington Post: “Our Palestinian people reject the threat of the occupation leaders and their call for the people of Gaza to leave their homes and go south or to Egypt.”

The evacuation orders followed Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s own announcement that Israel was “placing a complete siege on Gaza” following Hamas’ surprise attacks on Israeli civilians last weekend.

The announcement meant “no power, no food, no water, no gas” for the area, according to a statement shared on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency has since described the call for a mass evacuation as “appalling,” with High Commissioner Philippe Lazzarini saying in a press release that it would “only lead to unprecedented levels of misery and push the people of Gaza further into the abyss. ”

As reported on Friday, 1,300 people, including 27 Americans, were killed in attacks by Hamas in Israel, NBC News reported, citing US officials. The Palestinian Ministry of Health also announced earlier that 1,537 people had been killed in Gaza.

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