Largest Gaza hospital says it is running out of fuel, overstretched

Shifa Hospital, where victims of the al-Ahli Hospital blast were taken, will run out of fuel on Wednesday unless more supplies enter the Gaza Strip, the hospital’s general director says.

The hospital, Gaza’s largest, is stretched far beyond its capacity following the al-Ahli explosion, Mohammed Abu Selmia says, adding that health workers were still treating severely wounded patients.

“They are all in a terrible situation,” he tells The Associated Press. “A young woman whose limbs were amputated, a child whose intestines came out, many others have had limb amputations, bleeding in the brain, bleeding in the liver and spleen.”

He said earlier that doctors were performing operations on the floor without anesthesia and that a shortage of essential medical supplies was an urgent issue.

If the hospital runs out of fuel, it could be forced into a total shutdown of services, he says, adding that doctors would “remain with the sick and wounded.”

Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry says 37 people were killed following overnight Israeli airstrikes in the al-Qasasib and Halima al-Saadia areas of Jabalia, in northern Gaza.