A young injured boy weeps at the overcrowded Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on 18 October, 2023. Photo: Mohamed Zaanoun / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP
By ABC correspondent Allyson Horn in Israel and ABC staff in Gaza
Warning: Some readers might find the details in this story distressing.
Two children on life support, a girl and a boy, lie on the ground of Gaza's busiest hospital.
The Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza city has been flooded with patients since Israel declared war on Hamas three weeks ago.
So for these two children, there are no beds. The cold, dirty linoleum floor is the only space doctors can place them.
Their dad is also on life support and their mother is missing - presumed dead - after an Israeli air strike hit their neighbourhood.
The children's uncle, Abdallah el Houssari, squats down near his niece and nephew, keeping vigil.
Their bodies are draped in silver thermal blankets, as oxygen machines beep continuously, keeping them alive. Blood is splattered on the ground all around them.
El Houssari is distressed at the conditions inside the Al-Shifa Hospital.
"The hospital is in a dire situation," he says. "The injured are treated on the floor. We don't have drugs and stretchers and we ask the Ministry of Health to do its job.
"It has to find a solution. We cannot leave injured people on the floor."
Patients and families fleeing the air strikes line the corridors of Al-Shifa Hospital. Photo: Mohamed Zaanoun / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP
Desperate measures to keep people alive
Al-Shifa Hospital is Gaza's busiest medical facility, and it usually has capacity to treat 700 patients. Its doctors are now treating more than 5000 Palestinians.
Doctors inside Gaza say the health system has completely collapsed after it was swarmed with patients needing urgent medical care.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says doctors have carried out surgeries and amputations without proper anaesthesia, because they have run out of crucial medical supplies.
Other doctors share horrific stories of using dishwashing liquid to clean patient wounds, using rags instead of sterile bandages, and sewing needles instead of specialised medical equipment.
Some doctors have worked by the torchlight of their phones after generators ran out of fuel to power the lights.
Inside Al-Shifa, Dr Mohammed Ghneim rushes from one patient to the next, offering just a few minutes per person.
All of the patients are sitting or lying on the floor with varying degrees of wounds. Some have been hit by shrapnel or exploding bits of buildings. Others have severe burns.
Ghneim says doctors are having to choose who they think will have the greatest chance of survival.
"It's horrible. Many of the casualties that we're seeing - especially the burn casualties - I haven't seen anything like this before," he says. "It's a fourth-degree burn, it's unusual, it's horrible."
File photo: A boy injured in an Israeli attack on Al-Shati refugee camp receives treatment at Al-Shifa. Photo: 2021 Anadolu Agency
Al-Shifa faces unthinkable horrors
In one of the wards, a father sits next to his young son, whose mother was killed.
The boy is bruised and bloodied. His head is wrapped in bandages and his eyes are too swollen to open.
"I don't know what happened, a rocket hit us," the boy speaks softly.
His father expects more of the family will die from a lack of medical support.
"To be honest, they don't have enough means at the hospital," he says. "My brother and his son and daughter died. My nephew is in the ICU but he cannot be treated.
"Even my niece, she was still breathing but the doctor told us to consider her dead - they could not resuscitate her."
Outside the main hospital building, a giant emergency tent has been erected to temporarily store the bodies of the dead. Women and men pass through the white marquee, searching to see if their relatives are among the growing pile.
A woman screams out when she discovers her loved one has not survived.
A man drapes a blanket over the lifeless body of a small child. Many of the dead inside the tent are children.
The Hamas-run Ministry of Health says more than 3500 Palestinian children have been killed since the war began.
One-third of hospitals and nearly two-thirds of medical centres have closed from damage, or a lack of fuel.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Health announced Gaza's only hospital for providing cancer treatment had also stopped functioning. It warned the Al-Shifa Hospital would also soon run out of fuel for its main generator.
"[If that happens] the electricity will be shut off," says Ghneim. "This will affect us as staff and the patients who need surgeries, need oxygen pumps, and this will affect all the casualties at the hospital."
Aid organisations have pleaded with Israel to allow humanitarian supplies of fuel to be delivered into Gaza so hospitals can remain open.
"Hospitals are facing an unprecedented level of devastation, primarily driven by the overwhelming number of injuries, critical shortages of vital resources and concerns of being hit by air strikes," the UN says.
But Israel said it will not allow fuel through, because it fears the supply could be intercepted by Hamas.
Israel said Hamas had also built operational command centres beneath the Al-Shifa Hospital, which is denied by Hamas.
The UN says that the 13 hospitals still operational in Gaza City and the enclave's north have received repeated Israeli evacuation orders.
But for the little boy and girl on the floor of Al-Shifa Hospital, there is nowhere to go.
- This story was first published by the ABC.
