Dozens at Gaza hospital at risk of starving to death, authorities say

Health Ministry warns patients could die from lack of food, water as UN official briefs Security Council on conditions.

Dozens of wounded patients at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza are at risk of dying due to lack of food and water, Palestinian health authorities have said.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said late on Tuesday that 60 patients were “at risk of death”.

“The humanitarian situation inside the hospital has become extremely dangerous, as the wounded lack basic needs, which increases their suffering under the difficult conditions imposed by [Israeli] forces,” the ministry said in a statement on Telegram on Tuesday.

The hospital is located in Beit Lahiya in the north of the Gaza Strip, which has been under Israeli military siege since early October.

In its separate daily update on the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza, the ministry said that at least 28 people had been killed and 54 others injured in “four massacres against families”.

“A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and civil defence crews cannot reach them,” the ministry added.

The death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, rose to 44,786 people following the latest attacks, the ministry said.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa later reported that at least seven Palestinians had been killed and others injured when Israeli fighter jets bombed a multistorey residential building in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

The ministry’s latest update came after Sigrid Kaag, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator for the Gaza crisis, briefed members of the UN Security Council in a closed meeting in New York on Tuesday afternoon.

Speaking to reporters after the briefing, Kaag said she told the council the situation in the Gaza Strip is “a very, very bleak picture”.

“I’ve spoken of the inhumane conditions in which our fellow human being civilians are trying to survive, the young and the old,” she said.

Responding to a question from Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo on whether the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime could overshadow Israel’s war on Gaza, Kaag said she was working to keep Gaza “on the map”.

Kaag also said she discussed with members of the UNSC “our hope for a ceasefire and the unconditional release of the hostages that this would enable, obviously, a further surge of assistance”.

Kaag’s comments came as Israel’s Channel 13 reported that Israeli National Security Council ministers have been briefed that Hamas has expressed an interest in reaching a ceasefire and captive deal.

Channel 13 also reported that Qatar has been “playing a significant role in negotiations for the deal” after previously announcing it was suspending its role as mediator.

Speaking at the Doha Forum on Saturday, Qatari Foreign Minister and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said “momentum is coming back” to ceasefire talks.

The latest expectations of a truce come as the Israeli military announced it had launched 480 attacks on Syria in the 48-hour period after Syrian rebels toppled the decades-long regime of the al-Assad family.

Israeli forces also seized Syrian-controlled territory in a buffer zone of the Golan Heights that was established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement with Damascus.

A separate ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon has largely continued to hold.