Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital Struggles to Rebuild After Systematic Destruction
Former unit head details how Israeli forces targeted critical infrastructure "like a military system," leaving medics to rebuild with recycled equipment.
A senior doctor from Gaza’s largest medical complex has described the immense challenges of rebuilding the enclave’s shattered healthcare system, revealing that al-Shifa Hospital was systematically targeted and destroyed by Israeli forces in two major attacks.
Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, the former head of the burn unit at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, stated that Israeli forces targeted the facility “the same way they target a military system.” He detailed a methodical campaign to render the hospital non-functional.
“The first time they targeted the hospital in November 2023… they targeted every critical station or facility: the oxygen station, the generators, the telecommunication room, the electricity control room. So they kept the hospital out of service,” Dr. Mokhallalati told Al Jazeera.
“The second attack in March 2024, they wanted the hospital to be out of service forever, because they destroyed the buildings of the surgery hospital and the medicine hospital,” he added.
Rehabilitation efforts have been painfully slow and rely entirely on scavenged resources. The focus has been on the partially intact women’s hospital building, which now functions as the main operational unit.
Dr. Mokhallalati explained that the current capacity—350 beds, 20 ICU beds, and 10 operating theatres—was achieved through “a lot of effort” but by “recycling the instruments and the equipment from within Gaza’s system.”
He emphasized the dire context of this makeshift recovery: “There was nothing coming into Gaza for more than two years with hundreds of thousands of casualties, with a lot of burden on the health system.”
Source: Al Jazeera
