Palestinian officials say a baby has died and dozens more patients are at risk from an Israeli siege around Gaza’s largest hospital, while Israel said it has killed a Hamas militant who had stopped another hospital from being evacuated.
Israel says doctors, patients and thousands of evacuees who have taken refuge at hospitals in northern Gaza must leave so it can tackle Hamas gunmen who it says have placed command centres under and around them.
Hamas denies using hospitals in this way. Medical staff say patients could die if they were moved and Palestinian officials say Israeli weapons fire makes it dangerous for others to leave.
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“It’s totally a war zone, it’s a totally scary atmosphere here in the hospital,” Ahmed al-Mokhallalati, a senior plastic surgeon at Al Shifa hospital, told Reuters on Saturday.
“It’s continuous bombardment for more than 24 hours now, nothing stopped, you know, it’s all from the tanks, from the street, from the air strike.”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reported situation in Al Shifa hospital, where a Palestinian health ministry spokesman said Israeli shelling had killed a patient in intensive care.
Ashraf Al-Qidra, who represents the health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said Israeli army snipers commandeering rooftops of buildings near the hospital fired into the medical complex from time to time, limiting the ability of medics and people to move.
“We are besieged inside the Al Shifa Medical Complex, and the (Israeli) occupation has targeted most of the buildings inside,” he said.
The hospital suspended operations after fuel ran out, Qidra said, adding: “As a result, one newborn baby died inside the incubator, where there are 45 babies.”
Residents said Israeli troops, who began a war to eliminate Hamas after it staged a bloody cross-border assault on October 7, had been clashing with Hamas gunmen all night in and around Gaza City where the hospital is located.
“The hospitals need to be evacuated in order to deal with Hamas. We intend on dealing with Hamas who have turned hospitals into fortified positions,” the Israeli military said when asked if it planned to enter Gaza hospitals at some point.
Hamas denies using the hospital for its military purposes and has asked the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to send missions to Shifa to investigate the Israeli allegations.
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Israel said earlier it had killed what it called a Hamas “terrorist” who it said had blocked the evacuation of another hospital in the north, which Palestinian officials have said is out of service and surrounded by tanks.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said one baby was dead and 39 others were at risk because hospitals were cut off.
“Failure to bring fuel into the hospitals will be a death sentence for the rest. The incubators will only be able to work until this evening, after which the fuel will run out,” the ministry said.
Israel said on Saturday that rockets were still being fired from Gaza into southern Israel, where it has said about 1200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage by Hamas militants last month. It reduced the death toll by 200 on Friday.
Palestinian officials said on Friday 11,078 Gaza residents had been killed in air and artillery strikes since October 7, around 40 per cent of them children.
At another hospital, Al-Quds, medical teams worked on patients under torchlight in video footage released by the Palestinian Red Crescent. The hospital is one of four that Palestinian officials said on Friday had been blockaded by Israeli tanks.
Israel said on Saturday it had increased the number of places in which it said it would stop firing for several hours at a time so Gazans could move south and said many had done so.
Meeting in Saudi Arabia, Muslim and Arab countries called for an immediate end to military operations in Gaza, declaring at a joint Islamic-Arab summit that Israel bears responsibility for “crimes” against Palestinians.