The director of Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, has described to Al Jazeera the ordeal the staff and patients are going through during Israel’s siege.

Dr Muhammad Abu Salmiya: “We have no electricity except in the emergency section. The nursery section is out of service, the maternity is out of service, all internal sections are out of service. Yesterday, five injured have died because they were in need of surgeries. We couldn’t conduct such surgeries. Today two have died, they were in a very serious condition — we couldn’t operate on them due to a lack of electricity.

“All our blood bank stock is over — our MRIs are out of service. Our dialysis equipment — for two days our patients haven’t been through dialysis. The oxygen generators are not working. We had two generators, one was attacked the other is out of fuel.

“We don’t have a single drop of water. All of the tanks of water are on top of the hospital so we can’t operate water without electricity. This is not a hospital anymore. Our medical staff can’t offer any medical services to any patients.

“Yesterday two newborns died, today another has died. Now this is a critical situation. Being a pediatric [specialist] I am telling the world: if they stay in the same condition we would lose all of them in 48 hours because we need incubators that would regulate temperature that is conducive to their age and weight. Special milk is unavailable for them these children have very low immune systems. Probably within 48 hours if they are not admitted to proper incubators we would lose them.

“Also the intensive care unit has been attacked. Eight patients could have been killed. Fortunately they did not die.

“We have placed patients on the floor of the hospital … this is a very bad situation indeed.”