AFP-Thursday evening, Al-Quds hospital changed to a real hell after the fire broke out in it because of an Israeli bombing attack, which created a horrible feeling of fear among the patients and their relatives who tried to escape from it.
The flames lit up the building that swallowed up part of the “Tal Al-Hawa” which is usually sunken in darkness due to power outages, and the residents started to evacuate the sick and wounded are still lying on a stretcher, with the transfer of at least three children were born prematurely and were inside incubators to the streets to rescue them from the fire.
Some doctors tried to keep a man in the department of rehabilitation alive, so they put an oxygen mask on his face, while a burning debris falling to the ground around them, amid of the sounds of gunfire and Israeli bombing. After moments the roof of the hospital collapsed launching in the sky thousands of flames of fire.
A man in the age of 42, named Muhammad Hosni shouted:” this is horrible”. He said that he tried to escape accompanied by his daughter, aged seven years and his wife:”I’m afraid for my family”. Hosni intended the hospital in the morning accompanied by his wife and daughter to escape from tank bombs which they were pouring down on their neighborhood, but they were to die between the enormous flames of fire during their escape.
Also an elderly woman holding her son shouted:” where are they taking us? “Where are we going?” they might shoot us.
The French emergency doctor “Reges Gareg” the head of the non-governmental organization “HELP DOCTORS” which work in Gaza said that:” two hundred people have fled to the hospital escaping from the fighting.”
The fire broke out in the morning at the hospital of the Palestinian Red Crescent in the adjacent administrative offices as a result of the Israeli bombing.
At the beginning, the fire was contained at the pavilion of the patients, but the fire raged in the management building. The officials in the hospital said that the fire was caused by “phosphorus shells”.
Gareg said:” the Israeli troops are attacking and bombing the whole area around the hospital. We can’t get out from it, there is fire and we are being held inside it, and there is no water.”
He said also:” at 10 o’clock in the previous evening (Wednesday), we were attacked violently specially around the hospital. Bombing was continuing, a barrage of bombs fall on us since that time until eight or nine o’clock in the next morning (Thursday). He said that the bombing was very close and around 1:45 am (in local time) as I recall, a shell fell on the hospital.
He added:” the pharmacy in the second floor collapsed, along with the entire section of another building. The panic among the people who were in the hospital, especially the patients and their families begun to rise when the fire started in the building. I can’t describe for you the state of panic prevailed.”
Dr. Bashar Murad seemed to be frustrated and helpless about what is going on, and said: I’ve 3 dead bodies at a distance of 500 meters from here, also I have a number of wounded people on the distance of one kilometer, but I can’t move without the permission because the ambulances had to wait for the green light from the Israeli army to allow them to move and save the lives.”
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