Al Shifa hospital: The medical lifeline for Gazans Israel says is also a Hamas command centre
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00:00 Dar al-Shifa, or House of Healing in Arabic.
00:04 As the largest and most extensive medical complex in the Strip, it's the heartbeat of
00:08 Gaza.
00:09 But for Israeli authorities, it's Hamas' main command centre.
00:14 Based on intelligence information and an operational necessity, IDF forces are carrying out a precise
00:22 and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital.
00:29 Both Israel and the United States have said Hamas militants were using Gaza's hospitals
00:34 to hide command posts and hostages, using underground tunnels that stretch for hundreds
00:39 of kilometres.
00:41 It's a claim the group has repeatedly denied.
00:44 "Shifa is a hospital that is older than the occupation itself and it houses the sick and
00:51 the injured, and doctors and nurses and also houses displaced children, women and the elderly.
00:58 The arrival of the occupation's tanks to Shifa is not an achievement.
01:03 Shifa is a medical and civilian building and not a military site."
01:09 The site is located in the north of the Strip and used to house British army barracks.
01:14 It became a hospital in 1946 and has been a lifeline for Gazans, notably through the
01:19 Arab-Israeli wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973.
01:25 Like all hospitals in the Strip, Israel's siege on Gaza has meant doctors are working
01:30 in extreme conditions, lacking oxygen, water and fuel.
01:35 This doctor is standing in what used to be the hospital's ICU unit before it came under
01:39 attack.
01:40 "Here, as you can see, instead of the patients being connected to the devices to save their
01:45 life, we've had to evacuate the area completely, as you can see.
01:50 The paramedics were forced to evacuate this department to save people from Israeli airstrikes
01:54 and sniping."
01:57 Al Shifa hospital has a capacity of 700, but Doctors Without Borders says the number of
02:02 patients there is currently in the thousands, with hundreds more just waiting to be admitted.
02:08 With ongoing bombardment, it's unclear whether Al Shifa will withstand the war.
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