Israel-Hamas war and Gaza ceasefire talks: live updates

Fearing a raid by Israeli forces, like those carried out on Gaza hospitals, al-Najjar’s medical staff rushed to relocate more than 200 patients. Some patients left in cars secured by family members, while the seriously injured were transferred by ambulance to other hospitals in southern Gaza, including the European Hospital in Khan Younis and the Field Hospital in Rafah International Medical Corps.

But even during the rush to evacuate the hospital, Israeli airstrikes on Rafah continued. The bodies of 58 people killed in Israeli strikes have arrived at the hospital since Sunday, Dr al-Hams said, adding that hospital staff had to ask the victims’ families to bury the bodies themselves. .

“The situation is not dangerous; the situation is catastrophic, catastrophic, catastrophic,” he said.

The Israeli military’s actions also immediately limited access to basic health services in Rafah. Project HOPE, a US-based humanitarian group that runs several clinics across Gaza, was forced to close a mobile medical unit in the area from which Israel has asked people to leave. He provided primary care in eastern Rafah and treated upper respiratory infections and gastrointestinal illnesses that were spreading among displaced Palestinians crowded into shelters with little access to clean water and sanitation. .

The aid organization also had to close another medical clinic elsewhere in Rafah, outside the evacuation zone, early Monday because six of its medical workers – including a general practitioner, a gynecologist and nurses – were living inside. or immediately next to where the Israeli army was located. said it would begin operations, said Chessa Latifi, deputy director of emergency preparedness for Project HOPE.

Many medical workers had already been displaced from their homes in Khan Younis and Gaza City and were forced to flee once again with their families, including dozens of children – this time, alongside patients. whom they were treating in eastern Rafah.

At least two delegations of doctors who tried to enter Gaza on Monday to support struggling hospitals in the northern part of the enclave were forced to turn back as the security situation deteriorated, even before the Israeli army takes control of the Rafah crossing on Tuesday.

A delegation of Jordanian doctors, organized by the HOPE Project, aimed to reach Kamal Adwan Hospital in the far north of Gaza to relieve overwhelmed medical staff and deliver much-needed supplies, including anesthetics, sutures surgical and gauze. This delegation was also supposed to pay the salaries of the aid group’s medical staff in Rafah – money they desperately needed to secure housing and transportation during the chaotic evacuation.

“We have had contingency plans in place for a very long time, especially as it became increasingly clear that the Rafah offensive was going to begin,” Ms. Latifi said. But “the consequences of what is happening are only growing,” she said.

Another delegation of medical personnel, organized by the humanitarian group MedGlobal, was halfway to Rafah from Cairo on Monday when it began receiving alerts from the World Health Organization coordination team that the Rafah crossing could soon be closed.

The doctors tried to move on. But once they were told the border crossing was imminent, “most of us realized that what was going to happen was going to be important,” said Dr. John Kahler, co-founder of MedGlobal .

The delegation included an anesthetist and a midwife who would support Al-Awda Hospital, one of the few hospitals still able to provide maternal care to pregnant women. Dr. Kahler himself planned to travel to Kamal Adwan, where his organization opened a nutritional stabilization center for malnourished children this weekend.

Speaking from Cairo on Tuesday, Dr. Kahler described the difficult decision to disband the delegation. If this was the start of a much-threatened ground attack, he said, moving into northern Gaza from Rafah would have been too dangerous, even if medics had been able to pass through the Rafah crossing on Monday.

The level of anxiety is “extremely high” among team members and their Palestinian partners inside Gaza as they wait to see what happens next, Dr. Kahler said.

“Babies will continue to be born; injuries will continue to happen; people will continue to die,” he added.