Employees at Al-Shifa hospital are working on burying approximately 150 bodies of Palestinian civilians in a mass grave at the besieged complex the Gaza ministry of health said on Tuesday.
The efforts come as Israeli sniper fire and bombings continue in the hospital’s courtyards and passages and around its buildings.
“We have repeatedly warned against hospitals becoming mass graves and morgues” the ministry’s director general Munir al-Barsh said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the ministry separately said it would take them “six hours of continuous work” to bury all the dead and added that the death toll is likely to increase due to the hospital’s failure to provide proper medical care for the wounded and patients.
“Shells are still falling on Al-Shifa Medical Complex and everyone inside is surrounded by certain death” the spokesperson said.
No ambulances have been able to reach the complex since Friday according to officials from the hospital and the health ministry in Gaza.
After days of heavy airstrikes around Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital witnesses said tanks and armored vehicles were positioned only a few meters from the besieged facility.
“We were forced to bury them in a mass grave” Al-Shifa hospital director Mohamed Abu Salmiyah said adding that seven premature newborns and 29 intensive care patients were among those buried after the hospital’s fuel supplies used to run generators ran out.
