Gaza’s Main Hospital Becomes Teeming Camp for Displaced People

 An aerial view shows the compound of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 7, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
An aerial view shows the compound of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 7, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
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Gaza’s Main Hospital Becomes Teeming Camp for Displaced People

 An aerial view shows the compound of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 7, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
An aerial view shows the compound of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 7, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)

Crammed under makeshift canvas shelters in the car park, sleeping in corridors or on landings, passing the hours of the day in stairwells, hanging laundry on the roof - thousands of displaced Gazans are filling every space at Al-Shifa Hospital.

The main hospital in Gaza City has turned into a giant refuge for people whose homes have been bombarded, or who fear that they will be, in Israel's military assault on the Gaza Strip, which is entering its second month.

"We ran from our house because of the heavy air strikes," said Um Haitham Hejela, a woman sheltering with young children in an improvised tent fashioned from fabric, string and mats.

"The situation is getting worse day after day," she said. "There is no food, no water. When my son goes to pick up water, he queues for three or four hours in the line. They struck bakeries, we don't have bread."

Reuters journalists visiting the hospital on Tuesday saw people lying on both sides of corridors, leaving only a narrow space for anyone to walk, personal belongings stored in staircases and on window sills, and piles of refuse bags. The overwhelming impression was of extreme crowding.

The situation is not unique to Al-Shifa. The World Health Organization estimates 122,000 displaced Gazans are sheltering in hospitals, churches and other public buildings across the strip, with a further 827,000 in schools.

The war was triggered by an Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas fighters who killed 1,400 people and took 240 others hostage. In response, Israel has mounted an air, sea and ground onslaught against Hamas which has killed more than 10,000 people in the densely populated coastal strip, according to officials in Gaza.

‘From fear into fear’

For hospitals, the displacement crisis is compounding an already catastrophic situation, with shortages of medical supplies and electricity as huge numbers of gravely injured patients arrive daily. Staff are resorting to desperate measures, such as performing surgery without anesthetics.

At Al-Shifa, displaced people said they had come seeking safety, but did not feel safe because of nearby air strikes and the approaching Israeli military. Israel has said its forces had surrounded Gaza City.

The Israeli military has accused Hamas of hiding tunnel entrances and operational centers inside Al-Shifa, which Hamas has denied.

"We have run from fear into fear," said Um Lama, a grieving mother sheltering in a corridor with several children and older relatives.

Her daughter Lama was among those killed by a strike on an ambulance just outside the hospital gate on Friday. The hospital director said 15 people had been killed and 60 injured.

Israel said it had targeted an ambulance carrying Hamas fighters. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said the ambulance had been one of a convoy of five attempting to evacuate severely wounded people.

"Look at our situation. Is this a life that we are living? We have no food, no electricity or water. We sleep in the corridors," said Um Lama.

Israel has told Gazans still living in the north of the strip to move to the south, which is also being bombarded though less intensively.

An Israeli military spokesman was asked at a media briefing on Tuesday about reports of flash bombs going off over Al-Shifa overnight.

"I'm aware that it happened. There was probably some operational requirement," he said.

"We're trying to get people to leave, that's all I can say about that. These are the sorts of messaging for people to try to get out of there."

But the women sheltering in the hospital said that despite the dire living conditions and the fear, they had no intention of leaving as they had nowhere to go, and nowhere was safe.

"We are strong. Whatever they do with us, we won't leave Al-Shifa. They cut the water, the electricity, no food, but we are strong. We can eat only biscuits and nuts. We can eat anything," said Hejela.



Israeli Soldiers Describe Clearance of 'Kill Zone' on Gaza's Edge

Soldiers sit on top of APC's, at the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Soldiers sit on top of APC's, at the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
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Israeli Soldiers Describe Clearance of 'Kill Zone' on Gaza's Edge

Soldiers sit on top of APC's, at the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Soldiers sit on top of APC's, at the Israel-Gaza border, in Israel, March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo

Israeli troops flattened farmland and cleared entire residential districts in Gaza to open a "kill zone" around the enclave, according to a report on Monday that quoted soldiers testifying about the harsh methods used in the operation.

The report, from the Israeli rights group Breaking the Silence, cited soldiers who served in Gaza during the creation of the buffer zone, which was extended to between 800-1,500 meters inside the enclave by December 2024 and which has since been expanded further by Israeli troops.

Israel says the buffer zone encircling Gaza is needed to prevent a repeat of the October 7, 2023 attack by thousands of Hamas-led fighters and gunmen who poured across the previous 300 metre-deep buffer zone to assault a string of Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip.

"The borderline is a kill zone, a lower area, a lowland," the report quotes a captain in the Armored Corps as saying. "We have a commanding view of it, and they do too."

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report, Reuters reported.

The testimony came from soldiers who were serving in Gaza at the end of 2023, soon after Israeli troops entered the enclave, until early 2024. It did not cover the most recent operations to greatly enlarge the ground held by the military.

In the early expansion of the zone, soldiers said troops using bulldozers and heavy excavators along with thousands of mines and explosives destroyed around 3,500 buildings as well as agricultural and industrial areas that could have been vital in postwar reconstruction. Around 35% of the farmland in Gaza, much of which is around the edges of the territory, was destroyed, according to a separate report by the Israeli rights group Gisha.

"Essentially, everything gets mowed down, everything," the report quoted one reserve soldier serving in the Armored Corps as saying. "Every building and every structure." Another soldier said the area looked "like Hiroshima".

Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli soldiers that aims to raise awareness of the experience of troops serving in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, said it had spoken to soldiers who took part in the operation to create the perimeter and quoted them without giving their names.

One soldier from a combat engineering unit described the sense of shock he felt when he saw the destruction already wrought by the initial bombardment of the northern area of the Gaza Strip when his unit was first sent in to begin its clearance operation.

"It was surreal, even before we destroyed the houses when we went in. It was surreal, like you were in a movie," he said.

"What I saw there, as far as I can judge, was beyond what I can justify as needed," he said. "It's about proportionality."

'JUST A PILE OF RUBBLE'

Soldiers described digging up farmland, including olive trees and fields of eggplant and cauliflower as well as destroying industrial zones including one with a large Coca Cola plant and a pharmaceutical company.

One soldier described "a huge industrial area, huge factories, and after it's just a pile of rubble, piles of broken concrete."

The Israeli operation has so far killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health authorities, which do not distinguish between civilians and armed fighters. The Israeli military estimates it has killed around 20,000 fighters.

The bombardment has also flattened large areas of the coastal enclave, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in bomb-damaged buildings, tents or temporary shelters.

The report said that many of the buildings demolished were deemed by the military to have been used by Hamas fighters, and it quoted a soldier as saying a few contained the belongings of hostages. But many others were demolished without any such connection.

Palestinians were not allowed to enter the zone and were fired on if they did, but the report quoted soldiers saying the rules of engagement were loose and heavily dependent on commanders on the spot.

"Company commanders make all kinds of decisions about this, so it ultimately very much depends on who they are. But there is no system of accountability in general," the captain in the Armored Corps said.

It quoted another soldier saying that in general adult males seen in the buffer zone were killed but warning shots were fired in the case of women or children.

"Most of the time, the people who breach the perimeter are adult men. Children or women didn't enter this area," the soldier said.