PHOTO ESSAY: Gaza’s main hospital barely functions after Israeli raids and 21 months of war

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Shifa Hospital was once the cornerstone of the health system in the Gaza Strip. Now, after 21 months of war and two major Israeli raids, it barely functions.

Its corridors are filled with people wounded in Israeli airstrikes, its morgue packed with bodies. Doctors and nurses perform surgeries in squalid conditions, often by the light of cellphones. Patients waiting outside for dialysis treatment sit beside the rubble of a bombed-out hospital wing.

Israel carried out two major raids on Shifa and has attacked several other medical facilities, accusing Hamas militants of sheltering inside them. Medical staff have denied the allegations, but Hamas security men can often be seen inside such facilities and have placed parts of them off limits to the public.

Hospitals can lose their protected status under international law if they are used for military purposes.

Israel says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians, including by evacuating such facilities and delivering aid to them. But medics say the raids have recklessly endangered patients and wrecked the health system as casualties mount from the ongoing war.

Israel first raided Shifa in November 2023, weeks after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the war. The military said the hospital served as a major Hamas command and control center but provided little evidence beyond a single tunnel leading to underground rooms near the facility.

Israeli forces returned to Shifa in March 2024, igniting days of heavy fighting in which the military said it killed some 200 militants who had regrouped there. The hospital’s emergency ward and a surgery building were destroyed.

Today, former storage rooms now house patients. Medical supplies are scarce because of Israel’s blockade and the breakdown of law and order in the territory, which has made it difficult for aid groups to deliver supplies. Power outages are routine because of a lack of fuel.

Much of the staff are volunteers working long hours without pay. Some rooms are so crowded that patients lie on the floor. Flies swarm throughout the facility, in part because of a lack of disinfectant.

This is a documentary photo story curated by AP photo editors.

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