Gaza City’s main hospital is bustling with patients and mourning families on Tuesday as the Palestinian enclave reels from Monday’s violence in which Israeli forces killed at least 60 protesters and wounded more than 2,700.
Gaza's biggest hospital is overwhelmed with casualties after Israeli forces fired at Palestinian demonstrators during the #GreatReturnMarch. We witnessed scenes of chaos at the Al Shifa hospital last night. Since then, the number of Palestinians killed raised to 60 pic.twitter.com/wvy36CTFwu
— TRT World (@trtworld) May 15, 2018
Throughout the last seven weeks, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been protesting as part of a weeks-long movement calling for the right of return for Palestinian refugees to the areas they were forcibly expelled from in 1948.
??#Palestine : Murder in cold blood.
The moment of shooting an innocent unarmed Palestinian protester straight through the head by Israeli snipers during the the march of great return at the eastern borders of #Gaza yesterday . pic.twitter.com/QzGeKqYLM2
— Shehab News (@ShehabAgencyEn) May 15, 2018
Since the protests began on March 30, Israeli forces have killed at least 109 Palestinians in the coastal enclave and wounded about 12,000 people.
Update from our Director of Programmes, Dr Andy Ferguson, who is at Al Shifa Hospital in #Gaza today: "First casualty has arrived here already, much earlier than previous Fridays."
Photo shows the temporary triage area set up outside the hospital. pic.twitter.com/z5Y7d9edIU
— MedicAidPalestinians (@MedicalAidPal) May 14, 2018
Ayman al-Sahabani, head of the emergency department in al-Shifa, told Al Jazeera that at least 18 people died while waiting to receive medical attention on Monday evening.
Dr Ferguson: "All theatres at Al Shifa hospital full, vascular and chest/ head injury cases mostly cleared, but over 70 major orthopaedic cases (majority lower limb) waiting for theatre space. New cases still arriving."
— MedicAidPalestinians (@MedicalAidPal) May 14, 2018
Al-Sahabani said:
“At one point, we had 500 cases arrive at once. This is way more than what the hospital’s capacity can take.”
Al-Sahabani added that medical staff were responding to injuries to the best of their ability, despite the lack of medical supplies.
Monstrous…."#AlShifahospital overflowing with patients, after @IDFSpokesperson army shoots scores of protesters…" #GreatReturnMarch @AJEnglish https://t.co/8ORks2xrZW pic.twitter.com/iAl7WmZ0zf
— Paul Chislett (@chislettshakeup) May 15, 2018
The most urgent cases had been injured by live ammunition and explosives, al-Sahabani noted.
(AJE, PC, Social Media)
