By Najib Jobain and Samy Magdy
Israeli forces pressed their offensive against Hamas in northern Gaza on Monday, battling militants around a hospital where thousands of patients and displaced people have been sheltering for weeks, raising Palestinian fears of another painful standoff and evacuation of a medical facility.
A shell struck the second floor of the Indonesian Hospital, killing at least 12 people, according to a medical worker inside the facility and the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. Both blamed Israeli forces. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The advance came a day after the World Health Organization evacuated 31 premature babies from Shifa Hospital. At least 28 were transported to Egypt on Monday. More than 250 critically ill or wounded patients remain stranded at the compound that Israeli forces stormed days ago.
The plight of Gaza's hospitals is the focus of a battle of narratives over the war's brutal toll on Palestinian civilians, thousands of whom have been killed or buried in rubble since the conflict was sparked by Hamas' Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel. In the wake of the assault, Israeli leaders vowed to eradicate Hamas, destroy its ability to rule Gaza and uproot its militant infrastructure.
Israel says Hamas uses civilians as human shields and operated a major command hub inside and beneath Shifa. Critics say Israel's siege and relentless aerial bombardment amount to collective punishment of the territory's 2.3 million Palestinians.
Marwan Abdallah, the medical worker at the Indonesian Hospital, said Israeli tanks were operating less than 200 meters (yards) from the hospital, and that Israeli snipers could be seen on the roofs of nearby buildings. As he spoke over the phone, the sound of gunfire could be heard in the background.
Abdallah said the hospital had received dozens of dead and wounded in airstrikes and shelling overnight.
Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra, who is now based in southern Gaza, said some 600 patients, 200 health care workers and 2,000 displaced people are sheltering there. "The occupation aims to evacuate the hospital, as it did in Shifa,” he said.
In a separate development that could relieve some of the pressure on Gaza's collapsing health system, dozens of trucks entered the territory from Egypt on Monday with equipment from Jordan to set up a field hospital. Jordan’s state-run media said the hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis would be up and running within 48 hours.
CLAIMS ABOUT SHIFA
Babies evacuated from Gaza’s embattled Shifa hospital arrived in Egypt, according to the country's state-run media, after the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said it was transporting 28 premature babies across the border. It was not immediately clear where the other three babies who were evacuated from Shifa were.
Following that evacuation, over 250 patients with severely infected wounds and other urgent conditions remain in Shifa, which can no longer provide most treatment after it ran out of water, medical supplies and fuel for emergency generators.
Israeli forces battled Palestinian militants outside its gates for days before entering the facility on Wednesday. Four babies died in the two days before the evacuation, according to Mohamed Zaqout, the director of Gaza hospitals.
Israel’s army said it has evidence supporting its claims that Hamas maintained a sprawling command post inside and under the hospital’s 20-acre (8-hectare) complex, which includes several buildings.
On Sunday, the military released a video showing what it said was a tunnel discovered at the hospital, 55 meters (60 yards) long and about 10 meters (33 feet) below ground. It said the tunnel included a hole for gunmen to fire out of, and ended at a blast-proof door that troops have not yet opened.
Israeli forces also released security camera video showing what they said were two foreign hostages, one Thai and one Nepalese, who were captured by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack and taken to the hospital. Hamas said its fighters brought them in for medical care.
The army also said an investigation had determined that Israeli army Cpl. Noa Marciano, another captive whose body was recovered in Gaza, had been wounded in an Israeli strike on Nov. 9 that killed her captor, but was then killed by a Hamas militant in Shifa.
The military has previously released images of several guns it said were found inside an MRI lab and said that the bodies of two hostages were found near the complex.
The Associated Press was not able to independently confirm the military's findings.
Hamas and hospital staff have denied the allegations of a command post under Shifa. Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan dismissed the latest announcement, saying “the Israelis said there was a command and control center, which means that the matter is greater than just a tunnel."
THREE IN FOUR PEOPLE DISPLACED
Israel has repeatedly ordered Palestinians to leave northern Gaza and seek refuge in the south, which has also been under aerial bombardment since the start of the war. Some 1.7 million people, nearly three-quarters of Gaza’s population, have been displaced, with 900,000 packing into crowded U.N.-run shelters, according to the U.N.
International aid group Doctors Without Borders said 70 people were killed and at least 52 wounded, including children, in strikes in the southern town of Khan Younis on Saturday. It said it was performing 10 burn surgeries a day at the town’s overwhelmed Nasser Hospital, where hundreds of people need such operations.
More than 12,700 Palestinians, including more than 5,000 minors, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank, which coordinates with officials in the Health Ministry of Hamas-run Gaza. Officials there say another 4,000 are missing and believed buried in rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.
Violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where attacks by Jewish settlers are on the rise and where more than 200 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, mostly in gunbattles triggered by Israeli military raids.
About 1,200 people have been killed on the Israeli side, mainly civilians during the Oct. 7 attack, in which Hamas dragged some 240 captives back into Gaza. The military says 66 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza ground operations.
Hamas has released four hostages, Israel has rescued one, and the bodies of two were found near Shifa.
Israel, the United States and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, have been negotiating a hostage release for weeks. Israel's three-member war Cabinet is to meet with representatives of the hostages’ families on Monday evening.
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel and Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem contributed.
Updated November 20, 2023 at 10:50 a.m. ET with the latest details.
