In Gaza’s largest hospital, time is running out for 36 newborns.
Israeli tanks have taken up positions outside Al-Shifa Hospital, which Israel says is located on tunnels containing a headquarters for Hamas, which uses patients as shields.
US President Joe Biden said hospitals in the Gaza Strip needed to be protected and he hoped for a “less intrusive” approach from Israel as tanks advanced on the main gates, while Britain’s Rishi Sunak said “too many civilians” were dying in the coastal strip.
As criticism of Israel’s attacks in Gaza grew louder, the Jewish state announced that it would move incubators for the newborns. A doctor at the hospital said three babies had died so far due to lack of oxygen and electricity.
Dr. Mohamed Abu Selmia, head of the main Al-Shifa hospital, told the BBC that Israel had not yet made any contact regarding the evacuation of the newborns.
In Gaza’s largest hospital, time is running out for 36 newborns (pictured).
“No, they did not come forward, instead we reached out to them… but so far we have not received any response,” he said. “There are negotiations about the evacuation of premature babies, but nothing has happened so far.”
After days of heavy airstrikes around Al-Shifa Hospital, witnesses reported that tanks and armored vehicles were just meters from the besieged facility.
The medical center has become a flashpoint in the five-week-long war as Israeli forces advance further into Gaza City.
The United Nations believes there may be thousands and possibly more than 10,000 people – patients, staff and displaced civilians – inside and unable to escape due to heavy fighting nearby. Many use it as a refuge in the besieged north of the Gaza Strip.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra, who was at Al-Shifa Hospital, said on Monday that 32 patients, including three newborns, had been admitted in the past three days due to the siege of the hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip and lack of Power supply died.
The Israeli military said early Tuesday it had “launched a humanitarian operation to coordinate the transfer of incubators” from Israel to Al Shifa.
However, it was clarified that none of the equipment commonly used to keep premature babies warm had been received by the facility.
There was no immediate comment from Al Shifa or Hamas.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces appear ready to enter the hospital.
This would be a pivotal moment in the war and would show once and for all whether Hamas terrorists have indeed stationed their secret headquarters beneath the hospital.
But any such move by the Israel Defense Forces to enter the hospital would result in civilians, patients and doctors being caught in the middle of bitter fighting.
At least 650 patients were still at Al-Shifa Hospital, desperately waiting to be evacuated to another medical facility. Meanwhile, the hospital’s director said today that 179 people, including babies and patients who died in intensive care, were buried in a “mass grave” at the complex.
“We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” said Mohammad Abu Salmiyah, director of Al-Shifa Hospital, adding that seven babies and 29 intensive care patients were among those buried after fuel supplies at the hospital were exhausted.
“There are corpses scattered around the hospital complex and there is no electricity in the morgues,” he said, noting that no fuel has entered the Gaza Strip since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.
On Tuesday, a man and a woman died in intensive care, bringing the number of people who died in the ward to 29, Salmiyah said.
As criticism of Israel’s attacks in Gaza grew louder, the Jewish state announced it would move incubators for the babies. A doctor at the hospital said three babies had died so far due to lack of oxygen and electricity. Some of the babies will be seen in the hospital on November 12th
The Israeli military said early Tuesday it had “launched a humanitarian operation to coordinate the transfer of incubators” from Israel to Al Shifa
A picture shows an exterior view of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on November 10
Amid reports of premature babies dying due to lack of electricity and patients being exposed to gunfire, a Doctors Without Borders surgeon said the situation at the hospital had become “very bad.”
“We have no electricity.” There is no water in the hospital. “There is no food,” said the doctor, who was not identified by his organization. “It’s inhumane.”
Israel accuses Hamas militants of using tunnels under the hospital as command nodes, effectively using the sick and injured as human shields.
It is an accusation that Hamas denies.
Israel says it did not target the hospital but has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the Oct. 7 attacks that killed an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and returned 240 hostages to Gaza.
According to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, the Israeli attack has already killed 11,240 people, mostly civilians, including thousands of children.
Israel says 46 of its soldiers have been killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner insisted that Al-Shifa was “central to Hamas’ command and control capabilities” but said the troops were currently “standoffish.”
“The idea is to try to evacuate people, as many as possible,” he said.
Biden called on Israel to “be less intrusive compared to the hospital,” in what was among his sharpest comments yet on Israeli operations.
“The hospital needs to be protected,” he told reporters.
He added: “There are efforts to achieve this pause to deal with the release of prisoners and this is also being negotiated, with the Qataris … committed.”
Last night, in some of his harshest comments yet, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that “too many civilians” are dying in Gaza.
He said there must be “unhindered humanitarian access and urgent and substantial humanitarian pauses,” and told the mayor’s banquet in London: “There are things that Israel needs to do as part of that response.”
“We have made it clear that they must act within international law, that they must take all measures to protect innocent civilians, including in hospitals, stop extremist violence in the West Bank and allow more aid into Gaza… too many civilians are losing out Live life.
“That is why I have doubled our assistance to Gaza and we continue to press both at the United Nations and directly with Israel for unhindered humanitarian access and urgent and substantive humanitarian pauses.” We want that assistance by air, land and sea arrives and we are ready to use our bases in Cyprus as a stopover.”
A satellite image shows Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza on November 11
Men examine the bodies of people killed in a bomb attack in Gaza on November 10
To underscore the role that global public opinion plays in the war, both sides have repeatedly offered vastly different accounts of events.
Israeli Lerner put the number of people in hospital at “several hundred,” while Hamas government deputy health minister Youssef Abu Rish, who is in the hospital, said about 20,000 displaced people had sought refuge there.
About two-thirds of people in the densely populated Mediterranean region have been left homeless by Israel’s military campaign to order the evacuation of the northern half of the Gaza Strip.
Hamas’s brutal attacks on October 7 and Israel’s massive response sparked protests around the world, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets across the Middle East, Europe and beyond.
Israel’s supporters insist it must protect its citizens after the worst attack in the country’s 75-year history – an attack that evoked painful echoes of past pogroms against the Jewish people.
But Israel’s critics point to the consequences of the blockade and the almost relentless bombing raids on the long-suffering civilian population in Gaza.
International aid organizations speak of hundreds of thousands of displaced people and an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.
Israel’s top diplomat admitted Monday that his country has “two or three weeks left before international pressure really increases.”
Quoted by his spokesman, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen added that Israel is working to “expand the window of legitimacy, and fighting will continue as long as necessary” as the IDF continues its mission to destroy Hamas.
Amid mounting pressure, Israel has agreed to daily pause military operations around certain humanitarian “corridors” to allow Gazans to escape the fighting.
So far, Israeli leaders have insisted that there will be no broader ceasefire before the hostages are released. But Qatar is brokering talks about a possible deal to release the hostages.
Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the military wing of Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades, said on Monday that a possible deal would include the release of 100 Israeli hostages in return for 200 Palestinian children and 75 women in Israeli prisons.
The Al-Qassam Brigades released an audio recording on its Telegram channel in which it said the group was ready to release the hostages, an offer Israel is unlikely to accept.
“We have told the (Qatari) mediators that in a five-day ceasefire we can release 50 of them and the number could rise to 70 due to the difficulty of the prisoners being held by different factions,” Obeida said. He claimed that Israel had demanded the release of 100.
As security officials and diplomats continued negotiations, Hamas released a video of a young woman said to be an Israeli soldier being held in Gaza.
The Israeli army later confirmed the woman’s identity.
“Our condolences go out to the Marciano family, whose daughter Noa was brutally kidnapped by the terrorist organization Hamas,” the army said in a statement.
Army spokesman Daniel Hagari said troops found “evidence indicating that Hamas was holding hostages” in the basement of Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, showing footage of a baby bottle and a rope near a chair.
In the video, he showed neatly arranged assault rifles, grenades and, as Hagari said, “vests with explosives.”
A view of damaged buildings in Gaza after artillery attacks, seen from southern Israel, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, November 14
IDF tanks move across a field in southern Israel on November 13
Civil defense teams and civilians conduct a search and rescue operation among the rubble of destroyed buildings following the Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza City on November 14
The war in Gaza has also led to violence on other fronts.
In the northern West Bank, five Palestinians were killed in clashes around the town of Tulkarem, the director of a local hospital told AFP on Tuesday.
After repeated attacks on US forces in the Middle East, the United States launched airstrikes that killed at least eight pro-Iranian fighters in eastern Syria, a Britain-based monitoring group said.
On Monday, Israel used warplanes to attack what it said were “operational command centers” of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.