Gaza Hospitals Overwhelmed by Hundreds of Injured from Israeli Barrage

Mourners react next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Mourners react next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
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Gaza Hospitals Overwhelmed by Hundreds of Injured from Israeli Barrage

Mourners react next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Mourners react next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

Israel's sudden onslaught of airstrikes overnight overwhelmed Gaza hospitals already reeling from weeks of an aid blockade, medics and health authorities said on Tuesday, as ambulances ferried in hundreds of badly injured survivors.

Video obtained by Reuters showed rescue workers running with stretchers across smoking debris, ambulances rushing to hospitals, a morgue full of bloodied bodies in white bags, and casualties lying outside while relatives mourned the dead.

"We received no less than 400 cases in less than two hours," said Mohammad Qishta, a Medicins Sans Frontieres emergency doctor working at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

"There were some serious cases such as burns ... third degree burns on the face, amputations, wounds on the head, wounds on the chest," he said, Reuters reported.

Gaza health authorities issued an urgent statement on Tuesday asking residents to donate blood, saying stocks of different blood types had been exhausted.

Gaza's health system was devastated by Israel's 15-month military campaign, launched in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas in 2023, putting many of the territory's hospitals out of action, killing medics and reducing crucial supplies.

Although a ceasefire came into effect in January, talks to transition to a second phase of the agreement stalled in February. Israel announced it was cutting off all aid, including medical supplies, into Gaza on March 2 over a dispute with Hamas on the next phase of the deal.

"The entry of all goods and supplies to the Gaza Strip will be halted," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said at the time.

Tuesday morning's airstrikes, which Palestinian health authorities said killed more than 400 people, took place across the tiny, crowded Gaza Strip where the war has left most people homeless.

Israel said it was resuming airstrikes in response to Hamas' rejection of its proposals for extending the ceasefire.

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The World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said 20 of Gaza's 36 hospitals remained partially functional. However, far fewer were still able to handle surgery, aid agencies said. Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Khalil Al-Deqran said only seven of the territory's hospitals were still providing services.

Jasarevic said the shortage of medicines meant even in working hospitals medics might not be able to provide treatment.

"The occupation did not allow the entry of medical equipment, devices and very necessary medical consumables to maintain what remains of the health system and functioning hospitals," Gaza hospitals director Mohammed Zaqout said.

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which works with rescue and health services in Gaza, said its team in the territory had reported on Tuesday that medical facilities were overwhelmed.

"The situation is rapidly deteriorating, even before the recent developments, because since the beginning of March we didn't get any other aid, any other medicine," the federation's spokesperson Tommaso Della Longa said.

Even reaching casualties is more difficult because of damage to ambulances and a lack of fuel, said Shaina Low of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which is suspending most operations in Gaza because of the danger from strikes.

"We've already seen the suspension of 20 ambulances in Gaza because of lack of petrol. We're going to see hospitals shutting down," she added.



Syrian Government, Kurdish Officials Discuss Merging Their Armed Forces

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa (R) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi signing an agreement, to integrate the SDF into the state institutions, in the Syrian capital Damascus on March 10, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa (R) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi signing an agreement, to integrate the SDF into the state institutions, in the Syrian capital Damascus on March 10, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
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Syrian Government, Kurdish Officials Discuss Merging Their Armed Forces

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa (R) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi signing an agreement, to integrate the SDF into the state institutions, in the Syrian capital Damascus on March 10, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa (R) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi signing an agreement, to integrate the SDF into the state institutions, in the Syrian capital Damascus on March 10, 2025. (SANA / AFP)

Government officials met Wednesday in the northeastern province of Hasakeh with the commander of the main Kurdish-led group in the country, the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is backed by the US.

The new Syrian government wants to bring Syria’s breakaway Kurdish militias back under government control, but the details of their recent breakthrough agreement are still being worked out and negotiators will have overcome a decade of civil war.

Wednesday’s meeting comes a week after Syria’s interim government signed a deal with the Kurdish-led authority that controls the country’s northeast, including a ceasefire and the merging of the SDF into the Syrian army.

The deal should be implemented by the end of the year. It would bring northeast Syria’s borders and lucrative oil fields under the central government’s control.