CNN: Israel ‘Rearranged’ Weapons at Shifa Hospital

Date: 19 November 2023 - 22:01

News ID: ۱۲۱۶۶۱

OCCUPIED AL-QUDS (Dispatches) -- An analysis Saturday by CNN did not exclude the possibility that the Zionist army “rearranged” weapons it claimed to have found at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City before the international media were allowed to visit the site.
CNN said that according to a Nov. 15 video published by Israeli army spokesperson Jonathan Concricus, an AK-47 gun was seen behind an MRI machine in one of the buildings in the Al-Shifa Hospital complex.
But when Fox News foreign correspondent Trey Yingst visited the site, he filmed two AK-47 guns behind the MRI machine, not one as appeared in the earlier video by the Israeli army.
“It is unclear where the second AK-47 gun came from and why it is not visible in the earlier IDF clip,” said CNN.
It noted in its analysis that BBC was also granted access to the MRI room at the hospital and filmed the two AK-47 guns.
The occupying regime of Israel has long accused Hamas of using the Al-Shifa Hospital to direct military operations -- an allegation vehemently denied by the Palestinian resistance group.
The Gaza-based Health Ministry said dozens of patients, including premature babies, have died at the hospital between Nov. 11-16 due to a lack of electricity as the Israeli army cordoned off the hospital before storming.
On Sunday, 31 “very sick” premature babies were safely transferred from Gaza’s main hospital to another in the south on Sunday, and will be moved to Egypt on Monday, health officials said, as scores of other critically wounded patients remained stranded there days after Israeli forces entered the compound.
The fate of the newborns at Shifa Hospital had captured global attention after the release of images showing doctors trying to keep them warm. A power blackout had shut down incubators and other equipment, and food, water and medical supplies ran out as Zionist forces faced stiff resistance from Palestinian fighters outside the hospital.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media that the “very sick” babies were evacuated along with six health workers and 10 staff family members. They were taken in ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent to a hospital in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where they were receiving urgent care.
The babies suffered from dehydration, vomiting, hypothermia and some had sepsis because they didn’t receive any medication, and they had not been in “suitable conditions for them to stay alive,” said Mohamed Zaqout, director of Gaza hospitals. They’ll go to Egypt for more specialized care, he said.
A WHO team that visited the hospital on Saturday said 291 patients were still there, including the babies, trauma patients with severely infected wounds, and others with spinal injuries who are unable to move. Four babies died in the two days before their visit, according to Zaqout.

About 2,500 displaced people, mobile patients and medical staff left Shifa Hospital on Saturday morning, the WHO said. It said 25 medical staff remained, along with the patients.

“Patients and health staff with whom they spoke were terrified for their safety and health, and pleaded for evacuation,” the agency said, describing Shifa as a death zone.

Heavy clashes were reported in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza overnight into Sunday. “There was the constant sound of gunfire and tank shelling,” Yassin Sharif, who is sheltering in a UN-run hospital in the camp, said by phone. “It was another night of horror.”

The commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said 24 people were martyred in what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike on a school in a crowded UN shelter in Jabaliya the day before.

More than 11,500 Palestinians have been martyred, according to Palestinian health authorities. A further 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble.

More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, is struggling to provide basic services to hundreds of thousands of people sheltering in and around schools and other facilities. Seventeen of its facilities have been directly hit and 176 people reportedly killed, the agency said.

Their misery has worsened in recent days with the arrival of winter, as cold winds and driving rain buffet tent camps.

Israel cut off all fuel imports at the start of the war, causing Gaza’s sole power plant and most water treatment systems to shut down, leaving most residents without electricity or running water.

The Israeli military plans to expand its invasion to southern Gaza, where Israel has told Palestinian civilians to seek refuge. The Zionist regime has repeatedly struck the south, often killing civilians.

The evacuation zone is already crammed with displaced civilians, and it was not clear where they would go if the invasion moved closer. Egypt has refused to accept any influx of Palestinian refugees, in part because of fears that Israel would not allow them to return.