Gaza’s largest functioning hospital, Nasser Medical Complex, is on the brink of disaster due to a critical fuel shortage and a widening Israeli ground offensive in the southern city of Khan Younis.
The hospital was forced to stop admitting patients on Thursday after Israeli troops and tanks advanced into a nearby cemetery and fired towards camps for displaced families. Medical staff and dozens of patients in intensive care remain inside the hospital, where the fuel shortage threatens to shut down life-saving services.
“We are still working in the hospital. The tanks are just metres away. We are closer to death than to life,” medical staff wrote in a message to local journalists. The Israeli military has not commented on the situation, but it has previously issued evacuation orders for the areas around the hospital.
An Israeli military official told Reuters that around 160,000 litres of fuel destined for hospitals and other humanitarian facilities had entered Gaza since Wednesday, but that the fuel’s distribution around the territory was not the responsibility of the army.
The hospital’s fuel shortage is so severe that electricity generators are expected to function for only one more day. If the power goes out completely, dozens of patients, particularly those dependent on ventilators, would “be in immediate danger and face certain death,” the hospital warned.
Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the Gaza representative of the World Health Organization, described Nasser hospital as “one massive trauma ward” during a visit last week. He noted that the facility, which normally has a 350-bed capacity, was treating about 700 patients, and that exhausted staff were working 24 hours a day.
The situation is dire, with medical staff performing surgeries without electricity or air conditioning. The hospital’s director and doctors have reported receiving hundreds of trauma cases over the past four weeks, many of them linked to incidents around aid distribution sites. “There’s many boys, young adolescents who are dying or getting the most serious injuries because they try to get some food for their families,” Dr. Peeperkorn said.
In a separate development, a senior Hamas commander was among eight people killed in an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced families in Jabalia. Iyad Nasr, who led the Jabalia al-Nazla battalion, died alongside his family, including several children, and an aide when two missiles hit a classroom at Halima al-Saadia school. Another Hamas commander, Hassan Marii, and his aide were reportedly killed in a separate air strike on an apartment in al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City.
The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. At least 57,762 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that a new Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal could be just days away, but a Palestinian official told the BBC that indirect negotiations in Qatar were stalled, with sticking points including aid distribution and Israeli troop withdrawals.