"Decomposing bodies of children". Shocking video from Gaza
A video filmed during a ceasefire by the Emirati television channel Al Mashhad in the abandoned al-Nasr hospital in Gaza appears to show the decomposing bodies of five children left behind during the evacuation, NBC reported on Sunday.
9:07 AM EST, December 4, 2023
The al-Nasr Children's Hospital's pediatric intensive care unit was evacuated around November 10th due to the fighting and an evacuation order issued by the Israeli army to the southern Gaza Strip.
Television reports show the bodies of the children near catheters and respirators, with one of the deceased still connected to a device measuring the oxygen level in the blood, as per NBC.
Journalists then reached out to the hospital director. Dr. Mustafa al-Kahlot explained that the hospital staff determined they could not safely evacuate the five children, some of whom were premature.
Our evacuation from the al-Nasr hospital was very difficult and took place under fire. The children could not be carried or evacuated without oxygen equipment, he detailed.
A spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, run by Hamas, Ashraf al-Kudra, stated that medical teams could not manually evacuate the five children due to the "health standards" required for their transport. He squarely blamed the Israeli army for the children's deaths.
Children abandoned during evacuation found dead
In response to these accusations, the Israeli Defense Forces claimed that they "did not operate in the al-Nasr hospital". They called out these allegations as "not only false but a perverse exploitation of the death of innocent victims", which is being used to spread harmful misinformation.
They added, "This fact is particularly apparent considering that the Israeli army assisted in moving newborns from the Shifa hospital's pediatric department to a safer location, apart from providing Israeli incubators for their transport".
The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that despite receiving several requests for aid from hospitals in northern Gaza, it had not participated in any evacuation operations.
