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Israel-Gaza WarLive updates Hostage release deal Gaza Strip, explained Why
Israel and Hamas are at war See maps
Israel-Gaza WarLive updates Hostage release deal Gaza Strip, explained Why
Israel and Hamas are at war See maps



ISRAEL’S ASSAULT FORCED A NURSE TO LEAVE BABIES BEHIND. THEY WERE FOUND
DECOMPOSING.


A NURSE AT AL-NASR HOSPITAL WAS CARING FOR PREMATURE BABIES. THEN HE FACED THE
MOST DIFFICULT DECISION OF HIS LIFE.

By Miriam Berger
, 
Evan Hill
and 
Hazem Balousha
Updated December 3, 2023 at 1:05 p.m. EST|Published December 2, 2023 at 11:02
p.m. EST

Medical staff evacuate premature babies from Gaza's al-Shifa hospital on Nov.
20. Staff were unable to evacuate four babies from al-Nasr Children’s Hospital
nearby. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post)

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JERUSALEM — The nurse in the besieged hospital was caring for five fragile
babies. Infants, born premature, their parents’ whereabouts after a month of war
unknown. Now he faced the most difficult decision of his life.


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It was the height of Israel’s assault on northern Gaza last month, and al-Nasr
Children’s Hospital was a war zone. The day before, airstrikes had cut off the
Gaza City facility’s oxygen supplies. Israeli tanks had surrounded the hospital
complex, and the Israel Defense Forces were calling and texting the doctors,
urging them to leave.



But ambulances couldn’t safely reach al-Nasr to transport the wounded, and
doctors refused to leave the facility without their patients.

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The five premature babies were particularly vulnerable. They needed oxygen, and
medication administered at regular intervals. There were no portable respirators
or incubators to transport them. Without life support, the nurse feared, they
wouldn’t survive an evacuation.

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Then the IDF delivered an ultimatum, al-Nasr director Bakr Qaoud told The
Washington Post: Get out or be bombarded. An Israeli official, meanwhile,
provided an assurance that ambulances would be arranged to retrieve the
patients.

The nurse, a Palestinian man who works with Paris-based Doctors Without Borders,
saw no choice. He assessed his charges and picked up the strongest one — the
baby he thought likeliest to bear a temporary cut to his oxygen supply. He left
the other four on their breathing machines, reluctantly, and with his wife,
their children and the one baby, headed south.

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“I felt like I was leaving my own children behind,” said the nurse, who spoke on
the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy. “If we had the ability to
take them, we would have, [but] if we took them off the oxygen they would have
died.”

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ISRAEL-GAZA WAR

(Oded Balilty/AP)
The seven-day humanitarian pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas ended
Friday with aerial bombardment and rocket fire. More than 100 hostages held in
the Gaza Strip have been released.
For context: Understand what’s behind the Israel-Gaza war.

End of carousel

Two weeks later, the pause in hostilities allowed a Gazan journalist to venture
into the hospital. In the neonatal intensive care unit, Mohammed Balousha made
the awful discovery.

The decomposing bodies of the four babies. Eaten by worms. Blackened by mold.
Mauled, Balousha said, by stray dogs.

“A terrible and horrific scene,” he told The Post. He took video.

The grim discovery was a reminder of the harrowing civilian toll of Israel’s war
to eradicate Hamas, a campaign that has spared neither hospitals nor children.
Thousands have been killed.

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The current hostilities erupted on Oct. 7, when Hamas and allied fighters
streamed out of Gaza to attack Israeli communities near the enclave, killed
around 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240 more. Israel responded with a full
siege, airstrikes and ground operations that have killed more than 15,200
Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, including thousands of
children.

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Israel has long accused Hamas of hiding command-and-control centers in
hospitals; the Biden administration has backed the claim. Hamas and Gaza medical
staff deny it.

Still, Israeli commanders have made the territory’s health care infrastructure a
focus of the military campaign. A month into the war, that included al-Nasr.

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It was Nov. 10 when Israeli forces told al-Nasr’s staff they had to leave,
according to Qaoud, the hospital director. “They sent us a map for a safe
route,” he told The Post in a WhatsApp message. “They gave us half an hour to go
out. Otherwise, they will bombard the hospital.”

An official at the adjacent al-Rantisi pediatric cancer center seemed to receive
an assurance that ambulances would retrieve patients from both al-Rantisi and
al-Nasr. In a telephone conversation with the Coordinator of Government
Activities in the Territories, an arm of Israel’s defense ministry, the
al-Rantisi official requested ambulances. In a recording of that call released
by the Israel Defense Forces, a senior COGAT officer responds in Arabic: “No
problem.”

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The senior COGAT officer tells the al-Rantisi official that he will “arrange
coordination” for ambulances. He gives the precise route that medical staff
should take out of the complex.

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The al-Rantisi official reminds COGAT that staff will also be evacuating
al-Nasr. The COGAT officer acknowledges the reminder.

Qaoud, too, said there was “coordination with the Red Cross and Israeli army
that we will go out and then these cases will be later evacuated to another
hospital that was safe.”

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COGAT spokeswoman Shani Sasson told The Post that Israeli forces neither
directed al-Nasr’s staff to evacuate nor operated inside the facility. She
declined to answer whether COGAT or the Israeli military had been told about the
babies or taken any action to care for them.

On Saturday, IDF Spokeswoman Doron Spielman appeared to cast doubt on the story
during a live conversation on X, formerly Twitter: “There were no premature
babies that decomposed because of the IDF; there were probably no babies that
decomposed whatsoever,” he said.

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Sarah Davies, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in
Jerusalem, said the agency made no guarantees and could not safely reach the
hospital.

The evacuation was painful. There was no way to reach the babies’ families, the
nurse said. He had no contact information, and communications in much of Gaza
were down. Their parents had been “displaced people,” he surmised, “who knew
their children were in the hospital and didn’t think the hospital would be hit
or raided by the occupation.

“They thought they left them in safety.”

It was time to leave. The nurse gathered up the strongest baby, made sure the
others’ respirators were working, and, still wearing his scrubs, walked with his
family out of the hospital to begin the 18-mile journey, much of it on foot,
south to Khan Younis.

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On the road, the nurse found an ambulance to take the baby in his arms to
al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest. Israeli forces would raid that facility days
later. The World Health Organization eventually evacuated 31 premature babies
from al-Shifa. By then, several others had died.

On Nov. 24, after nearly seven weeks of fighting, Israel and Hamas began a
week-long pause to exchange captives and allow more aid into Gaza.

Balousha, a journalist with the Dubai-based Al-Mashhad channel, took advantage
of the relative calm to venture into Gaza City and report on corpses left out.
On Nabil Tammos Street, he found two bodies, a man and a woman. Someone had
covered them in a blanket.

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“People [were] telling me that the strongest story is found in al-Nasr
Hospital,” Balousha said. “They told me that premature babies were left in
intensive care and that they were supposed to be rescued,” but with the
fighting, “no one took them out.”

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During the pause, Israeli forces remained near the hospital, cutting off
civilian access. Balousha, undeterred, “jumped from wall to wall” through broken
buildings to reach the medical complex.

As he approached the neonatal intensive care unit, he said, he “started to smell
a foul odor.” He turned his camera on.

When Al-Mashhad aired the report, it blurred the remains. The channel gave an
unaltered copy of the video to The Post, which verified that it was recorded
inside al-Nasr’s neonatal intensive care unit by comparing it with images of the
facility from before the war.

The remains, still hooked up to respirators, bear little resemblance to bodies.
They appear as piles of rotting flesh, bones protruding, body parts difficult to
make out. Soiled-looking diapers remain wrapped around their middles.

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Balousha described the scene on camera and hurried out of the unit.

The nurse, who reviewed the video, said the corpses were found where he had left
the babies. No one had come for them.

Qaoud, the al-Nasr director, said the Israeli military “was informed there were
cases” left inside the hospital, but “was determined to evacuate.”

Davies, the Red Cross spokeswoman, said the organization “received several
requests to evacuate hospitals in the north of Gaza, but due to this security
situation, we were not involved in any operations of evacuations, nor did teams
commit to doing so.”

No one has emerged to claim the bodies. There has been no indication, the nurse
said, that the parents know their children are dead.

He remains haunted by the event. He believes he needs psychiatric treatment.

Of what, he asks, were the babies guilty?

“Were they fighters?” he asked. “Were they holding weapons? Were they firing
rockets?

“Why does the army hit the oxygen and electricity? Why did the army target
them?”

Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo contributed to this report.


ISRAEL-GAZA WAR

The seven-day pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas ended early Friday with
aerial bombardment and rocket fire.

Hostages: More than 100 hostages held in the Gaza Strip have been released.
Here’s what we know about the hostages released by Hamas so far.

Oct. 7 attack: A Post video analysis shows how Hamas exploited vulnerabilities
created by Israel’s reliance on technology at the “Iron Wall” to carry out the
deadliest attack in Israel’s history.

Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has a complicated
history. Understand what’s behind the Israel-Gaza war and see the history of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


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5689 Comments
Israel-Gaza war
HAND CURATED
 * Israel appears to shift war’s focus to southern Gaza; U.S. ship shoots down
   drones in Red Sea
   December 3, 2023
   
   
   Israel appears to shift war’s focus to southern Gaza; U.S. ship shoots down
   drones in Red Sea
   December 3, 2023
 * As Israel intensifies airstrikes on Gaza, U.S. defense secretary warns Israel
   must protect civilians
   December 2, 2023
   
   
   As Israel intensifies airstrikes on Gaza, U.S. defense secretary warns Israel
   must protect civilians
   December 2, 2023
 * 178 killed in Gaza after strikes resume, local health officials say
   December 1, 2023
   
   
   178 killed in Gaza after strikes resume, local health officials say
   December 1, 2023

View 3 more stories



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