An MSF surgeon conveyed the dire situation:
“We don’t have electricity. There’s no water in the hospital. There’s no food. People will die in a few hours without functioning ventilators. In front of the main gate, there are many bodies. There are also injured patients; we can’t bring them inside.
When we sent an ambulance to bring the patients – a few meters away – and they attacked the ambulance. There are injured people around the hospital looking for medical care. We can’t bring them inside.
There’s also a sniper who attacked patients, they have gunshot wounds. We operated on three of them.
The situation is very bad, it is inhuman. It’s a closed area no one knows about us. We don’t have an internet connection – you managed to call me now, (but) maybe you’ll (have to) try 10 times before you can reach me again.
The medical team agreed to leave the hospital only if patients are evacuated first. We don’t want to leave our patients. There are 600 inpatients, 37 babies, someone who needs an ICU. We can’t leave them.
We need a guarantee that there is a safe corridor (to leave) because we saw some people trying to leave al-Shifa and they killed them, they bombed them, the sniper killed them. Inside al-Shifa Hospital, there are injured patients and medical teams. If they give us guarantees and evacuate the patients first, we will evacuate.”