Thousands trapped near Gaza hospital as battles rage around al-Shifa

Thousands of people were trapped in and around Gaza’s largest hospital on Monday, as Israeli troops and Hamas fighters battled near the compound.

An image supplied to Reuters shows newborns in a bed after being taken off incubators in Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital due to power cuts. Picture: Reuters

Thousands of people were trapped in and around Gaza’s largest hospital on Monday, as Israeli troops and Hamas fighters battled near the compound.

The World Health Organisation and other UN agencies said as many as 3000 patients and staff are sheltering inside the al-Shifa hospital without adequate fuel, water or food at the centre, which has become a focal point in the territory’s bloodiest ever war.

More than five weeks into the war sparked by bloody attacks on Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US media “there could be” a deal to free some of the 240 hostages seized by Palestinian militants on October 7 and ­believed held in Gaza.

But the Israeli Prime Minister, facing increasing pressure at home over the captives, stopped short of providing any details or confirming ongoing negotiations.

“I think the less I say about it, the more I’ll increase the chances that it materialises,” he told NBC.

“We heard that there was an impending deal of this kind or of that kind and then we learned that it was all hokum. But the minute we started the ground operation, that began to change.

Twenty of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were “no longer functioning”, ­according to the UN’s humanitarian agency.

Patients were out “in the streets without care” after “forced evacuations” of two paediatric hospitals, an official in the Hamas-held territory said on Sunday, countering the Israeli army, which said it ­secured safe passage for civilians.

“The forced evacuations of al-Nasr and Rantisi paediatric hospitals have left sick people on the streets without care”, said ­Mohammed Zaqut, director-general of hospitals in the Palestinian territory.

“We have completely lost contact with the caregivers” at these two hospitals.

The Israeli military said it had “enabled the evacuation” of the two hospitals and opened an ­additional route for the safe passage of civilians to the south of the Gaza Strip.

Mr Zaqut also described a “catastrophic” situation inside al-Shifa hospital, saying “no one can enter or leave it” amid heavy fighting.

Doctors and aide groups have said that two babies had died in the neonatal unit after power to their incubators was cut off, and a man had also died when his ventilator shut down.

For days, al-Shifa officials have said that dozens of bodies have been abandoned near the hospital and in its courtyard. An al-Shifa ambulance driver, speaking by phone, said ambulances had come under sniper fire while trying to approach the bodies.

“We asked to be able to bury the bodies, but anyone who goes out into the courtyard of al-Shifa hospital gets shot,” Mr Zaqut said.

The Israeli military has denied deliberately targeting hospitals and has accused the Islamist militant group of using medical facilities or tunnels underneath them as hideouts – a charge Hamas denies.

Fears intensified for Palestinians seeking shelter and patients needing treatment after Gaza City’s al-Quds hospital went out of service due to lack of generator fuel, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

The war broke out after Hamas fighters poured through the militarised border with Israel on October 7, killing about 1200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 people hostage, according to Israeli figures.

Israel’s relentless campaign in response has killed at least 11,180 people, also mostly civilians and including 4609 children, according to the Hamas government’s media office.

Despite growing calls for a ceasefire, Mr Netanyahu has flatly rejected halting the fighting without release of the hostages.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told MSNBC that there had been “active negotiation” on a potential deal but kept silent on any details.

A Palestinian official in Gaza, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mr Netanyahu was to blame for the lack of progress on freeing captives.

“Netanyahu is responsible for the delay and obstacles in reaching a preliminary agreement on the release of several prisoners,” the official told Agence France-Presse.

Very little aid has made it into Gaza during the war, with the densely populated coastal territory effectively sealed off by a total blockade that Israel has vowed to maintain until the hostages are freed.

The Israeli military confirmed that a Jordanian plane dropped medical equipment and food to the Jordanian Hospital in the Gaza Strip.

AFP