Israel’s military said it was ready to evacuate babies from Gaza’s largest hospital on Sunday, where Palestinian officials said two newborns died. Dozens more were at risk after the generator that powers their incubators ran out amid intense fighting in the area. The hospital’s director said the building was being bombarded by Israeli artillery, rocket fire, and aircraft, and it had been forced to close its doors. He said that Doctors and nurses work by candlelight, and food supplies are running out. “It’s a war zone; it’s a terrifying atmosphere,” said senior plastic surgeon Ahmed al-Mokhallalati. “It’s not safe to move patients,” Israel says hospitals are being used as command centers by Hamas, which denies it and has been fighting to eliminate the militant group since it staged a bloody cross-border assault on October 7. The military insists doctors, patients, and thousands of evacuees who have taken refuge in Gaza’s hospitals must leave so that it can deal with the gunmen.
Hospital workers have refused to go, saying allowing them to be moved would mean the babies could die and that the hospitals are themselves being threatened by Israeli weapons fire. A spokesperson for the Gazan Ministry of Health called on Israel to stop attacking the complex.
A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces told CNN that there was “ongoing intense fighting” in the vicinity of the hospital complex but denied firing at the facility or laying siege to it. The military declined to comment on whether it allowed people to leave the complex.
But the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, William Schomburg, told CNN that a convoy of four ambulances and an ICRC vehicle had reached the hospital on Monday to transport wounded people. He added that the Red Cross will send more vehicles to the hospital on Sunday.
The deteriorating humanitarian situation has intensified calls for an immediate ceasefire. In a message sent to his Israeli counterpart, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged both sides to “stop the violence, allow for the delivery of urgently needed medical supplies and allow patients to get out of hospitals.”
Meanwhile, Gaza’s border authority said the Rafah crossing into Egypt, which connects the enclave with the rest of the world and allows foreign passport holders to leave the territory, would reopen on Sunday for those who must travel abroad for treatment. But the border has remained closed to most other Gaza residents until assurances are given that their departure will be safe, the statement said.
Jordan, which has a peace deal with Israel and has been assisting the flow of aid into Gaza, air-dropped more aid into a field hospital in the enclave on Monday, the King Abdullah II Foundation said. The charity, which runs a children’s cancer ward at Al-Rantisi Hospital in northern Gaza, also said it had delivered four mobile clinics that were being repaired after being hit by Israeli air strikes.