A US volunteer nurse who worked in a Gaza hospital has said Israel is destroying its healthcare system.
Andee Vaughan, who has now left the enclave, said former colleagues at al-Quds hospital in Gaza City have messaged her asking why she has left and added: “They are telling me they are going to die”.
Two clinics have been destroyed by airstrikes and two damaged hospitals have been shut down during Israel’s latest two-week ground offensive on Gaza’s largest city.
A children’s hospital and a specialised eye centre are among the sites to have closed, the UN has said, and Jordan has evacuated a field hospital.
More than two dozen other medical stations and primary healthcare centres in the city, many of them crucial in malnutrition treatment, were forced to be suspended or shut down in September.
Other facilities are barely functioning, with medicine, equipment, food and fuel in short supply.
Patients and staff have been forced to leave hospitals, leaving behind only a few doctors and nurses to tend to children in incubators or other patients too ill to move.
Israel says Hamas fighters have been hiding in hospitals, which have been used to launch raids on Israeli assets.
Ms Vaughan, from Seattle, who arrived in Gaza in July, kept a video diary of her time at al-Quds, sharing dozens of films with The Associated Press, which verified them.
Describing the “insanity” of the situation, Ms Vaughan recalled how a patient with severe burns on 40% of his body was dropped off at a field of rubble and told by medics to find his way to a clinic for treatment.
“That is the state of the [Gaza] healthcare system,” which she claims Israel is purposefully dismantling.
Vaughan shot videos on her phone showing fighter jets attacking the city.
In one, her room shakes, and huge plumes of smoke block the view from her window; in another, an explosion rocks the walls of one of the hospital’s lower floors.
In the neo-natal unit, she held “skin to skin” one of the two remaining babies – just 13 days old – to try to soothe her.
She said the baby’s heart rate dropped dangerously low as explosions went off nearby.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in Gaza City, defying Israeli orders to leave, enduring what experts have assessed as famine conditions.
On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN that claims Israel is committing genocide in Gaza are false, and said: “If Hamas agrees to demands, war could end.”
Mr Netanyahu’s forces have closed the border crossing into northern Gaza since 12 September, preventing direct aid shipments to the city, while aid groups have scrambled to deliver supplies from the south.
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At least 32 people were killed by overnight Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said on Saturday.
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The UN said on Friday that Israel is striking Gaza every eight to nine minutes on average, with around 16,500 people fleeing Gaza City on Thursday alone.
More than 65,000 people have died since Israel began its campaign in the enclave, with more than 167,000 others wounded, according to the ministry.
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Israel’s military action was a response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which left around 1,200 people dead and 251 taken hostage, 48 of whom are still in Gaza.
