Within minutes of the Oct. 31 Israeli attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, the victims began flooding the Indonesian Hospital a mile away. Dr. Marwan Sultan, the hospital’s medical director, says that most of the injured and dead were women and children. Some had deep burns, serious head injuries, or missing limbs, Sultan told TIME four hours after the attack. There are only 16 intensive-care beds in the hospital, which was running dangerously low on fuel, threatening the lives of his patients. If the electricity goes, says Sultan, “they will die. They will die.”
The conditions for medical care in Gaza are deteriorating across the besieged 140-sq.-mi. coastal strip. Surgeons are operating by flashlight and rationing water, anesthesia, and the generator fuel needed to perform surgeries, provide electricity for incubators, and care for kidney-dialysis patients, doctors and health organizations tell TIME. The roughly two