At Gaza Hospital, Chaos and Desperation

A Palestinian girl injured in the Israeli assault is carried to Shifa Hospital, which as been overwhelmed by the number of dead and injured. (By Abid Katib -- Getty Images)

Khalaf said there are also shortages of medicines, medical tools, nitrogen for anesthesia, monitors -- nearly every item imaginable. Many essential staff members, especially nurses, have been unable to come to work, cut off by the fighting, Israeli tank positions and fear.

"Those in the middle of Gaza Strip could not come to work because the Israeli tanks have cut the strip into two pieces," Khalaf said.

Fawzi Nabulsia, the head of the hospital's intensive care unit, said he hasn't worked since the ground invasion began Saturday. He lives south of Gaza City near the former Israeli settlement of Nitzarim. Israeli forces are now in the area, blocking the road between his house and Gaza City, Nabulsia said.

"Maybe you can speak with the Israelis and ask them to allow me to go to hospital," he said over the telephone, his voice tinged with desperation. "We are in crisis."

Khalaf said hospital staffers who live north of the city, where some of the heaviest fighting and attacks have unfolded, are too fearful to leave their homes. "Moving along Gaza's streets is dangerous," he said.

Inside Shifa Hospital on Monday, its doctors struggled to cope. Imad Majdalawi had handled 20 operations in 24 hours. In virtually every case, he had to fix broken bones, treat burns and cuts, and stop bleeding. "The worse thing I saw was the burns," he said.

In one case, he wanted to send a patient who lost one of his eyes in an Israeli bombing to an eye hospital. But his request was turned down: the generator for the surgical theater in the hospital was needed to fuel the emergency room.

On Monday, he was treating Ghadeer, a 14-year-old girl whose hands were covered in gauze. Blood seeped through it. She was crying and shaking. Her mother and four brothers had been killed an airstrike. She didn't know this.

"I am cold. I can't move," Ghadeer moaned.

Majdalawi soothed her. "Don't worry Ghadeer. Everything will be fine."

But there was no anesthesia or even the appropriate scissors and thread to help Ghadeer. "We are leaving patients in pain," Majdalawi said.

A neurosurgeon, Rami al-Sousi, was engaged in a delicate operation to pull shrapnel from 5-year-old Salim al-Ar's head. The boy would survive. Sousi has two small children but he hasn't seen much of them in the past three days. Ninety percent of the patients he treated were civilians, he said.

"Yes, I'm tired. But I forget everything when I save lives," Sousi said.

Abdel Kareem reported from Gaza City.