A harrowing video shows decomposing babies in a Gaza hospital after they had to be abandoned amid Israeli attacks, say reports
A video shows abandoned dead babies inside a Gaza hospital's pediatric ICU unit.
Al-Nasr Children's Hospital was evacuated several weeks ago amid Israeli attacks.
The director of the hospital said that five premature babies could not be safely moved and were left to die.
A harrowing video shows abandoned dead babies inside a Gaza hospital's pediatric ICU unit weeks after it was evacuated due to Israeli attacks.
In the video, journalist Mohammed Baalousha, with the Emirati TV channel Al-Mashhad, gained access to Al-Nasr Children's Hospital in Gaza City. Blurred-out footage appears to show three of five dead infants lying in beds.
NBC News said it had obtained raw footage from the channel and had reviewed its contents.
"You will see now horrific scenes of this hospital," Baalousha said in the video, per a translation by NBC News.
The video was filmed about two weeks after the hospital was evacuated amid the ground invasion of Gaza by Israeli forces.
On November 9, air strikes hit the hospital and cut off the neonatal intensive care unit's oxygen supply.
The hospital's staff and critically ill patients were evacuated from the facility, but five premature infants in intensive care were not able to be removed, according to hospital officials.
Dr. Mustafa Al-Kahlot, director of the hospital, told NBC News that the babies, some of whom were on oxygen machines, could not be safely evacuated.
"Our evacuation from Al-Nasr Hospital was very difficult and under fire," he said. "Children cannot be carried by hand or evacuated without oxygen equipment."
NBC News said it could not independently confirm the status of the dead infants between the time hospital staff evacuated and the point when the journalist accessed the unit.
Two independent forensic pathologists told NBC that the babies in the video were in advanced stages of decomposition – one body had insects crawling on it — consistent with the approximate two-week timeframe since they were abandoned.
In a video taken during the evacuation period, Al-Kahlot described the dire situation and said a child died due to "the lack of oxygen," per NBC News.
"We were bombed twice. The first was at the hospital gate, and the second was directly on the departments," Al-Kahlot said. "Al-Nasr Children's Hospital is out of service, except for the intensive care in which I am standing now, and in which eight patients are sleeping. If the electricity is cut off in this department, patients will die."
"We are trapped in the hospital. Ambulances cannot reach us," he said. Israel has been bombarding Gaza with air strikes and a ground offensive following the Hamas terror attacks on October 7.
Several hospitals, including Al-Nasr Children's Hospital, have come under siege.
The Israeli offensive has killed more than 15,000 people in Gaza, including more than 6,000 children, according to the health ministry.
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