Gaza (Web Desk/Agencies): Gaza's biggest hospital said that 179 people, including babies and patients who died in the intensive care unit, had been buried in a "mass grave" at the complex, the international media reported while quoting the director of hospital.
“We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” said Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiyah, adding that seven babies and 29 intensive care patients were among those buried after hospital fuel supplies ran out.
“There are bodies littered in the hospital complex and there is no longer electricity at the morgues,” he said, as no fuel has entered the Gaza Strip since the Israel-Gaza war began on October 7.
On Tuesday, a man and a woman died in the intensive care unit, bringing the number of people who had died there to 29, Salmiyah said.
A journalist inside the hospital who is collaborating with AFP said the stench of decomposing bodies was everywhere in the facility.
But he said nighttime fighting and air strikes from Monday into Tuesday had been less intense than previous nights.
Israeli tanks have massed at the gates of Al-Shifa hospital, which Israel says conceals an underground command “node” used by Hamas, a charge the Palestinian militant group denies.
The United Nations (UN) believes that thousands, and perhaps more than 10,000 people – patients, staff and displaced civilians – may be inside and unable to escape because of fierce fighting nearby.
As per the BBC, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that more than half of Gaza’s hospitals were now “non-functional”.
Meanwhile, the lives of 36 babies at Gaza's Al Shifa Hospital were hanging in the balance on Tuesday, according to medical staff there who said there was no clear mechanism to move them.
Three of the original 39 premature babies have already died since Gaza's biggest hospital ran out of fuel at the weekend to power generators that had kept their incubators going.
The 36 babies, who weigh less than 1.5 kg (3.3 pounds) and with some as small as 700 to 800 grammes, were now lying side-by-side on ordinary beds, exposing them to infection and without any individual adjustments to humidity levels and temperatures, staff said.
Separately, the Arab and Islamic countries and organizations have condemned the Israeli bombing of the headquarters of the Qatar Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza.
The foreign ministries of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Oman and Egypt in separate statements condemned the blatant aggression by the occupation forces on the Qatari committee's headquarters and emphasized the need for an immediate cease-fire to prevent further bloodshed.
Moreover, Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) also condemned Israeli bombing.
Dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children and women, were martyred and others were injured due to Israel's bombing of Gaza on Tuesday.
WAFA correspondent reported that the occupation warplanes launched a series of raids on the vicinity of the Shifa Complex, al-Kanz Mosque, and a residential building for Shawa family in Gaza City.
He said that ambulances were unable to reach the targeted places, to transfer the dead and treat the wounded, due to the continued bombing and siege of Gaza City.
The Palestinian death toll as a result of the ongoing aggression against the Gaza Strip since October 7 has exceeded 11,180, including 4,609 children.
