Israel offers to evacuate babies from Gaza’s main hospital amid fighting

Israel’s military said it was ready to evacuate babies from Gaza’s largest hospital on Sunday, where Palestinian officials said two newborns had died and dozens of others were at risk after fuel ran out amid intense fighting in Gaza. area.

Israel’s top military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said the Israeli military would help evacuate the babies from the hospital at the request of Al Shifa staff.

Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of the hospital, told Al Jazeera TV that protecting patients was the priority.

“We contacted the Red Cross and informed them that we ran out of water, oxygen, fuel and everything else,” said Abu Salmiya.

“Premature babies, intensive care patients and even the injured would not be able to survive without electricity. If the occupying forces want to evacuate the injured to anywhere in the world that is safer than the Gaza Strip, we are not against that.”

Israel says doctors, patients and thousands of evacuees who have taken refuge in hospitals in northern Gaza must leave so they can confront Hamas gunmen who it says have placed command centers under and around them.

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Hamas denies using hospitals in this way. Medical staff say patients could die if they are transferred and Palestinian authorities say Israeli fire makes it dangerous for others to leave.

Israeli Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter called the evacuations the “Gaza Nakba” – a reference to the mass expropriations of Palestinians following the founding of Israel in 1948.

“Operationally, there is no way to conduct a war the way the IDF [Forças de Defesa de Israel] they want to conduct it within Gaza territories,” said Dichter. “I don’t know how this will end.”

Hamas said it had fully or partially destroyed more than 160 Israeli military targets in Gaza, including more than 25 vehicles in the past 48 hours. An Israeli military spokesman said Hamas had lost control of northern Gaza.

At a press conference on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the deaths of five more Israeli soldiers in Gaza. The Israeli military said 46 people have been killed since ground operations began.

Israel said rockets were still being fired from Gaza into southern Israel, where about 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage by Hamas last month.

Palestinian authorities said on Friday that 11,078 Gaza residents have been killed in air and artillery strikes since October 7, around 40% of them children.

“A war zone”

Ahmed al-Mokhallalati, a senior plastic surgeon at Al Shifa, told Reuters there had been continuous shelling for more than 24 hours. He said most of the hospital staff and people sheltering there had left, but 500 patients remained.

“It’s totally a war zone. It’s a totally scary atmosphere here at the hospital,” he said.

The military wing of Hamas-allied Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds Brigades, said it was “involved in violent clashes in the vicinity of the Al Shifa Medical Complex, the Al Nasr neighborhood and the Al Shati camp in Gaza.”

Al Nasr is home to several important hospitals.

Israel previously said it killed what it called a Hamas “terrorist” who allegedly prevented the evacuation of another hospital in the north, which Palestinian officials said was out of service and surrounded by tanks.

It stated that Ahmed Siam was killed along with other fighters while hiding in Al Buraq school. Palestinian officials told Reuters on Friday that at least 25 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack on the school, which was packed with evacuees.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, and Maytaan Lubell, Maytaal Angel and Emily Rose Jerusalem; additional reporting by Crispian Balmer, Ari Rabinovitch, Adam Makary, Omar Abdel-Razek and other Reuters bureaus; writing by David Brunnstrom and Miral Fahmy ; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Simon Cameron-Moore)