<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><br><div dir="ltr"><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/fear-grips-israel-hit-gaza-hospital-151532593.html" target="_blank">http://news.yahoo.com/fear-grips-israel-hit-gaza-hospital-151532593.html</a><div>
<br></div><div><div>By Sara Hussein</div><div>
35 minutes ago</div><div><br></div><div>SHEJAIYA (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - At Al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital near Gaza City, a handful of doctors and nurses hover over paralysed patients, wondering how to protect them from more air strikes as threatened by Israel.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The patients lie mostly inert in beds lined up in the hospital's reception, where staff moved them after an Israeli rocket crashed into the fourth floor.</div><div><br></div><div>The staff have appealed to international agencies for protection, and say the hospital is known to the Israeli army.</div>
<div><br></div><div>But it was hit again on Tuesday night.</div><div><br></div><div>Shortly afterwards, the Israeli army contacted the hospital three times, saying everyone should be evacuated by morning as the air force was planning to intensify its air strikes.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Director Basman Alashi explained that the 14 patients in the facility, many of them paralysed or in a coma, are in no position to be moved.</div><div><br></div><div>And even if they were, he said, there is no place to take them.</div>
<div><br></div><div>"There is no place safe in Gaza! If a hospital is not safe, where is?</div><div><br></div><div>"We cannot leave our patients, they are helpless. They cannot move, they cannot walk, they cannot eat, they cannot even scratch their heads by themselves," he said.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Even as he spoke, the sound of shelling rattled the hospital windows.</div><div><br></div><div>- 'Hospital shaking' -</div><div><br></div><div>More than 200 people have been killed in Gaza since the latest confrontation between Israel and Hamas militants erupted in the early hours of July 8.</div>
<div><br></div><div>After an Egyptian truce effort failed to get off the ground on Tuesday, there appears to be no end in sight.</div><div><br></div><div>View galleryPalestinian patients are treated at the Al-Wafa rehabilitation …</div>
<div>Palestinian patients are treated at the Al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital near Gaza City on July 16, 2 …</div><div>Mercifully, said staff doctor Hassan Sarsur, many of the patients are unconscious and unaware of what is happening.</div>
<div><br></div><div>But for others, the situation is terrifying.</div><div><br></div><div>"Several of our female patients are paralysed but conscious, and during the night they were crying with fear and clutching our hands," Sarsur said.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Aya Abdeen, one of eight women in the facility, is paralysed from the waist down because of a tumour in her spinal cord.</div><div><br></div><div>"Yesterday, when they said that we have to evacuate and with all the shelling, of course I was afraid," she told AFP.</div>
<div><br></div><div>"There was shelling all around and the hospital was shaking. And I am as you see, I can't move," she said.</div><div><br></div><div>"We are sick people, in a hospital!"<br></div>
<div><br></div><div>Karam Shublaq suffered a gunshot wound to his spinal cord in 2006 and is also paralysed from the waist down.</div><div><br></div><div>He is being treated for pressure sores and is fitted with a colostomy bag.</div>
<div><br></div><div>"We wake up to shelling and we go to sleep to shelling," he said.</div><div><br></div><div>"We can't even move and they hit the fourth floor of the building several times, so they moved us down here."</div>
<div><br></div><div>To care for the patients, the staff are working 24-hour shifts, battling fatigue but also fear.</div><div><br></div><div>"We are human beings, of course we are scared," said Sarsur.</div><div>
<br></div><div>"We don't know what to do to protect the patients. We'd already evacuated the fourth floor and now we've evacuated all the floors except the reception."</div><div><br></div><div>Several patients have been sent back to their families, but others require medical care that relatives can't provide.</div>
<div><br></div><div>- Watching over brother -</div><div><br></div><div>Sixteen-year-old Nur Okasha has been sleeping at the hospital for a week to keep watch over his 13-year-old brother Mohammed who has been in a coma for several months after nearly drowning.</div>
<div><br></div><div>He lies motionless on the bed, his eyes half open as Nur flicks away flies.</div><div><br></div><div>"We wanted to take him home, but the tube in his trachea requires a suction machine, and we don't always have electricity at home," the teenager explained.</div>
<div><br></div><div>He keeps vigil at Mohammed's side, putting in his eyedrops and talking to him.</div><div><br></div><div>"I want to make him feel like someone is always here. I tell him that his friends miss him. I talk to him about anything except the war," he said.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Doctors at the hospital have reached out to international agencies in a bid to secure Israeli assurances that the facility won't be hit again.</div><div><br></div><div>And a group of foreign activists are staying at the hospital in the hope that their presence might deter further attacks.</div>
<div><br></div><div>"The Israelis told the (international) agencies that the hospital was not the target, only the area around it. But they have already hit us directly," Sarsur said.</div><div><br></div><div>"We are helpless, the war comes to us and there is nothing we can do to stop it."</div>
</div><div><br></div><div>===</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><br clear="all"><div><div dir="ltr">Robert Naiman<br>Policy Director<br>Just Foreign Policy<br><a href="http://www.justforeignpolicy.org" target="_blank">www.justforeignpolicy.org</a><br>
<a href="mailto:naiman@justforeignpolicy.org" target="_blank">naiman@justforeignpolicy.org</a><br><div><span style="text-align:left"><a href="tel:%28202%29%20448-2898%20x1" value="+12024482898" target="_blank">(202) 448-2898 x1</a></span><br>
</div><div><span style="text-align:left"><br></span></div><div>
<span style="text-align:left"><br></span></div></div></div>
</div></font></span></div>
</div><br></div>