Gaza's largest hospital has become a "death zone," the World Health Organization said Sunday, announcing plans to evacuate the facility, as Israel's army said it was expanding operations to destroy Hamas.
A United Nations team said Sunday that 291 patients were left at Gaza’s largest hospital after Israeli troops had others evacuate. According to reports is AP, those left included 32 babies in extremely critical condition, trauma patients with severely infected wounds and others with spinal injuries who are unable to move.
Israeli troops are staying in the hospital. Israel’s military has been searching Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital for a Hamas command center that it alleges is located under the facility — a claim Hamas and hospital staff deny.
Medhat Abbas, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the Israeli military ordered the facility cleared and gave the hospital an hour to get people out.
Twenty-five of Gaza's hospitals aren't functioning due to a lack of fuel, damage and other problems, and the other 11 are only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.
Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive, claiming they were used as militant command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.
Internet and phone services were restored Saturday to Gaza, ending a telecommunications outage that had forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.
More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble.
The UN says some 1.6 million people have been displaced inside the Gaza Strip by six weeks of fighting, and Israel said Saturday its military was now "expanding its operational activities in additional neighbourhoods in the area of the Gaza Strip".
(With inputs from AFP, AP,)
UPDATES FROM DAY 45 OF THE WAR
Gaza's Hamas government said Sunday the death toll from fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants in the Palestinian territory had reached 13,000 since war began on October 7.
The Hamas government said more than 5,500 children were among the dead, alongside 3,500 women, with 30,000 more people wounded. Its health ministry has previously said it can no longer give exact tolls as intense fighting has prevented bodies from being recovered.
The Israeli army said Sunday five more soldiers had been killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip, raising the number of troop deaths there to 64 since the war began.
All five died in northern Gaza, where its forces are engaged in a ground operation against Hamas militants, the military said. Three reservists were killed on Saturday, with another reservist and a conscript killed on Sunday, it said in two separate announcements.
The Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip on Sunday said 41 members of one family were killed in an Israeli strike on their home in Gaza City.
The ministry released a list of names of 41 members of the Malka family it said were killed by the strike at dawn in the city's Zeytoun district. Fierce fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants occurred in the neighbourhood in the morning, according to AFP.
France is preparing to send its Dixmude helicopter carrier to the eastern Mediterranean to offer medical assistance in Gaza, the office of the French president said Sunday.
The Dixmude will set sail "at the start of the week and arrive in Egypt in the coming days," President Emmanuel Macron's office said.
A charter flight carrying more than 10 tonnes of medical supplies is also planned for the start of the week.
The Israeli army said Sunday three more soldiers had been killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip, raising the number of troop deaths there to 62 since the war began.
All three were reservists and died on Saturday in northern Gaza, the military said in a statement.
More than 30 premature babies were evacuated Sunday from Gaza's largest hospital, said a health official in the Hamas-run territory, as Israel's army struck more targets in its war on the Palestinian militant group.
The World Health Organization (WHO) scrambled to evacuate the last remaining patients and staff from Al-Shifa hospital, describing it as a "death zone" after UN officials visited the facility raided earlier this week by Israeli troops.
Mohammed Zaqut, director general of Gaza's hospitals, told AFP that "all 31 premature babies in Al-Shifa hospital... have been evacuated" along with three doctors and two nurses.
At least two Palestinians were killed Sunday during Israeli army raids in the West Bank, the Red Crescent said, as violence surges in the occupied territory in tandem with the Israel-Hamas war.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, a 45-year-old man was killed in Jenin, a stronghold of armed groups in the northern West Bank, and another person was killed in Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem further south.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment.
READ FULL STORY HERE | Israeli raids kill two Palestinians in West Bank: Red Crescent
DOHA: A deal to free hostages seized by Hamas in its October 7 attack on Israel now hinges on "minor" practical issues, Qatar's prime minister said Sunday, without providing details or a timeline.
Qatar has helped to broker talks aiming to free some of the about 240 hostages in return for a temporary ceasefire in the Gaza war.
"The challenges that remain in the negotiations are very minor compared to the bigger challenges, they are more logistical, they are more practical," Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told a joint press conference with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
President Joe Biden says that achieving a cease-fire amid Israel’s war with Hamas “is not peace” and that an important key to lasting stability is a reunited Gaza Strip and West Bank that can be governed under “a revitalized Palestinian Authority.”
“As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution,” Biden wrote.
“I have been emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop, and that those committing the violence must be held accountable.”
The first planeload of Palestinian children wounded in the Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip reached the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, part of a pledged relief effort by the country to aid 1,000 children.
The group of 15 people, including children and their family members, made it across the Gaza Strip's Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Friday. They then took a flight from the Egyptian city of El-Arish to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.
The UAE — a federation of seven emirates on the Arabian Peninsula also home to Dubai — has diplomatic relations with Israel following a 2020 recognition deal. (AP)
Elsewhere, a Hamas health official said more than 80 people were killed Saturday in twin strikes on a northern Gaza refugee camp, including on a UN school sheltering displaced people.
Social media videos verified by AFP showed bodies covered in blood and dust on the floor of a building where mattresses had been wedged under school tables, in Jabalia, the Palestinian territory's biggest refugee camp.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, described "horrifying images" from the incident, while Egypt called the bombing a "war crime" and "a deliberate insult to the United Nations".
UPDATE: constant horrors, another @UNRWA school bombarded several times in the north of #Gaza sheltering more than 4,000 people. Dozens reported killed including children. Second time in less than 24 hours schools are not spared. ENOUGH, these horrors must stop
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) November 18, 2023
A separate strike Saturday on another building in Jabalia camp killed 32 people from the same family, 19 of them children, Hamas health authorities said.
Israeli troops are staying in the hospital. Israel’s military has been searching Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital for a Hamas command center that it alleges is located under the facility — a claim Hamas and hospital staff deny.
Israeli troops ordered the evacuation of Al-Shifa hospital "in the next hour" over loudspeakers on Saturday, an AFP journalist at the scene reported, as troops combed the facility for Hamas hideouts.
Hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya told AFP Israeli troops instructed him to ensure "the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff, and that they should move on foot towards the seafront".
Every minute, every hour, the situation is getting worse in#Gaza
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) November 18, 2023
Thousands of people- including our colleagues- are being killed from bombs & strikes. Soon, more will die from consequences of the imposed siege.
A ceasefire is critical to save what is left of our humanity. pic.twitter.com/PmbCeUgEEw
Those left included 32 babies in extremely critical condition, trauma patients with severely infected wounds and others with spinal injuries who are unable to move.
