Dozens of corpses wrapped in white sheets lay on the ground today in the compound of the Indonesian Hospital in the Gaza Strip — victims of an Israeli airstrike on a refugee camp, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave.

The hospital was already suffocatingly full of seriously injured people due to Israeli shelling. Doctors were forced to operate in the corridors as the operating theaters were full, they explained.

Faced with drug shortages, power outages and incessant shelling rocking hospital wards, surgeons in Gaza are working around the clock trying to save a steady stream of patients.

“We are moving hour by hour because we do not know when we will receive patients. Several times we had to set up operating rooms in corridors and sometimes in hospital waiting rooms” said Dr. Mohammed al-Roun.

The doctor made this statement immediately after the shelling that damaged the Indonesian Hospital, which is located near the area where the Israeli army has advanced in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Fuel reserves to run generators are running out, doctors say.

Israeli tanks entered Gaza, home to 2.3 million people, after three weeks of heavy shelling in retaliation for an October 7 attack by Hamas militants that killed 1,400 people in southern Israel and kidnapped 240 others.

The raid on Jambaliya, Gaza’s largest refugee camp, killed 50 people and injured 150 others, the enclave’s health authorities said. The Israeli military confirmed the raid.

In a video obtained by the Reuters news agency, many people can be seen next to a huge crater watching the rescue efforts, in an area of ​​the camp that resembles a lunar landscape.

Inside the hospital, bloodied patients lay on stretchers and in carts, and Dr. Swaib Indais said: “We don’t know what to do first… There are wounded everywhere.”

Officials at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital said the overnight shelling damaged a cancer ward.

“The bombing caused severe damage and disabled some machinery. It also endangered the lives of patients and medical staff“, said Dr. Sobie Schaik, director of the hospital’s only cancer ward in the region.

– Israeli military confirms it bombed Jabaliya to kill senior Hamas commander –

The Israeli military confirmed the bombing, stressing that it targeted a senior Hamas commander, Ibrahim Biari, who was believed to be one of those responsible for the attack launched by Hamas against Israel on October 7.

The shelling, whose final toll may be much higher according to Hamas’ health ministry, destroyed “at least 20 buildings” in the Jambaliya refugee camp.

“Massacre in Jambaliya, more than 20 buildings were leveled, crushing residents and more than 50 witnesses arrived at the hospital,” the ministry announced in a message to the media. Dozens of camp residents “are under the rubble“, he added.

For its part, the Israeli military said that the “killing” of the Hamas commander “was carried out as part of a massive operation to fight terrorists and their infrastructure, belonging to the central Jabaliya battalion, which had taken control of political buildings in Gaza Strip”.

“The strike damaged Hamas’ command and control in the region, as well as its ability to direct attacks against Israeli soldiers operating across the Gaza Strip.“, he added.

“A large number of terrorists” who were with this Hamas commander were killed, the military said. “The underground infrastructure used by the terrorists collapsed after the attack“, the military added.

A resident of the camp, Rajeb Akel, 41, told AFP that he “heard a huge explosion that shook the whole of Jambaliya”.

“I went to see and it was an earthquake-like scene,” he said. “It is a horror, a large number of dead, injured, they are buried under the rubble.”

Earlier today, Hamas’ health ministry announced that 8,525 people, including 3,542 children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war with Israel.