“The most difficult decision of my life,” is how a nurse in a besieged hospital in the Gaza Strip described how he felt about his experience when he was caring for five “premature” infants, who were born prematurely and lost their fathers.

Speaking to the Washington Post, the nurse, a Palestinian working with Doctors Without Borders based in Paris, confirmed that this was at the height of the Israeli aggression on the northern Gaza Strip, which began last October, and Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital was a war zone.

He explained that the day before the incident, air strikes cut off oxygen supplies to the facility in Gaza City, as Israeli tanks surrounded the hospital complex, and the Israeli occupation army was calling the doctors and sending them text messages urging them to leave.

But ambulances were unable to safely reach Al-Nasr Hospital to transport the wounded, and doctors refused to leave the facility without their patients, according to the nurse.

Speaking to the newspaper, the nurse spoke about the children, saying that the five premature babies were particularly at risk, as they needed oxygen and medications given to them at regular intervals. There were no portable respirators or incubators to transport them. Without life support, the nurse feared they would not survive the evacuation.

Then the Israeli occupation army issued a warning, according to what the director of Al-Nasr Hospital, Bakr Qaoud, told the Washington Post: Get out or you will be bombed. Meanwhile, an Israeli official confirmed that ambulances would be arranged to transport patients.

The nurse did not find any other option before him, and he told the newspaper that he evaluated the situation and condition of the children, then decided to take one child with him, who he thought would be most likely to withstand a temporary interruption in the oxygen supply. Reluctantly leaving the four others on their breathing apparatus, he headed south with his wife, their children and only child.

The nurse, who spoke to the newspaper on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy, said: “I felt like I was leaving my children behind. “If we had the ability to take them, we would have done so, but if we had cut off their oxygen, they would have died.”

Two weeks later, the newspaper reported that the truce allowed a journalist from Gaza, Muhammad Baalousha, to venture into the hospital, and in the neonatal intensive care unit, he discovered a horrific thing: the decomposing bodies of the four children, which had been eaten by worms until they turned black due to mold. They had also been attacked by  stary dogs. 

Baalousha told the newspaper: “The scene is terrible and horrific.”

The newspaper stated that this horrific discovery serves as “a reminder of the heavy losses inflicted on civilians during the war launched by Israel to eliminate Hamas, a campaign that did not spare hospitals or children, as thousands were killed.”

Israel has long accused the Palestinian resistance movement “Hamas” of hiding command and control centers in hospitals, and the administration of US President Joe Biden supported this claim. Hamas and the medical staff in Gaza deny this.

However, the newspaper confirmed that Israeli leaders made the region's healthcare infrastructure a focus of the military campaign. After a month of war, this included Al-Nasr Hospital.

source: Sama News