Critically ill Palestinian infant dies before evacuators reach Gaza City hospital — UN

A critically ill newborn who was receiving treatment at Al-Helou Hospital in Gaza City died this morning before he could be evacuated by World Health Organization medical teams, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric says.

The WHO mission managed to evacuate three other critically ill newborns from Al-Helou to Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah where they will be able to receive lifesaving care that can no longer be provided at Al-Helou, which is now in the middle of a major war zone that Israel has ordered be evacuated.

Al-Aqsa Hospital itself is already overwhelmed and facing severe shortages of medical supplies, as more people flee south from the north, Dujarric says during a press briefing.

The UN spokesperson says aid workers continue to be among those killed, including one Doctors Without Borders (MSF) member reportedly killed yesterday in a strike in Deir al-Balah that seriously injured four others, as they waited for a bus to evacuate to an MSF hospital.

This was the 14th MSF staffer killed since the start of the war and brought the total number of aid workers killed in the conflict to at least 562.

Seven rescuers and firefighters from the Hamas-run Palestinian civil defense were killed while evacuating casualties from a school in Gaza City on Wednesday, Dujarric says.

Aid workers report that many displaced families, including pregnant women, are now living in the parking lot of Gaza City’s Shifa hospital.

“Hospital medics reported that most of their staff have either left for the south or are too terrified to keep coming to work amid the ongoing military activities,” Dujarric says.

While the majority of Gaza City has evacuated, roughly 200,000 of the earlier one million have remained — some physically unable to journey south, others can’t afford the trip, and others are not convinced that the conditions will be any better in the south, which has become exceedingly crowded and limited in humanitarian aid.