Premature Gaza babies evacuated to Egypt as Israeli tanks encircle second hospital

Health officials said 700 patients along with staff were under Israeli fire.

A group of 28 prematurely born babies evacuated from Gaza’s biggest hospital were taken into Egypt for urgent treatment on Monday, while Palestinian authorities and the WHO said 12 people were killed at another Gaza hospital encircled by Israeli tanks.

The newborns had been in north Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital, where several others died after their incubators were knocked out amid a collapse of medical services during Israel’s military assault on Gaza City.

Israeli forces seized Shifa last week to search for what they said was a Hamas tunnel network built underneath. Hundreds of patients, medical staff and displaced people left Shifa at the weekend, with doctors saying they were ejected by troops and Israel saying the departures were voluntary.

Live footage aired by Egypt’s Al Qahera TV showed medical staff carefully lifting infants from inside an ambulance and placing them in mobile incubators, which were then wheeled across a car park toward other ambulances.

The babies were transported on Sunday to a hospital in Rafah, on the southern border of Hamas-ruled Gaza, so their condition could be stabilized ahead of transfer to Egypt. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros

Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said 12 had been flown on to Cairo.

All of the evacuated babies were “fighting serious infections,” a WHO spokesperson said.

Eight infants have died since doctors at Shifa originally raised an international alarm this month about 39 premature babies at risk from a lack of infection control, clean water and medicines in the neo-natal ward.

12 DEAD IN HOSPITAL RINGED BY ISRAELI TANKS

At the Indonesian Hospital, funded by Jakarta, Gaza’s health ministry said at least 12 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded by firing into the complex encircled by Israeli tanks.

Health officials said 700 patients along with staff were under Israeli fire.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA said the facility in the northeast Gaza town of Beit Lahia had been hit by artillery rounds. Hospital staff denied there were any armed militants on the premises.

WHO chief Tedros said he was “appalled” by the attack that he, too, said had killed 12 people, including patients, citing unspecified reports.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said troops had fired back at fighters in the hospital while taking “numerous measures to minimise harm” to non-combatants.

“Overnight, terrorists opened fire from within the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza toward IDF troops operating outside the hospital,” the IDF told Reuters. “In response, IDF troops directly targeted the specific source of enemy fire. No shells were fired toward the hospital.”

Like all other health facilities in the northern half of Gaza, the Indonesian Hospital has largely ceased operations but is still sheltering patients, staff and displaced residents.

Israel has ordered the evacuation of the north, but thousands of civilians remain. Food, fuel, medicines and water have been running out across the enclave under Israel’s six-week-old siege.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said its clinic in Gaza City also came under fire on Monday.

In the south, where hundreds of thousands of Gazans who fled the north of the enclave are sheltering, at least 14 Palestinians were killed in two Israeli strikes on houses in Rafah, according to Gaza health authorities.

At least five people were killed and 10 wounded when an Israeli airstrike hit an apartment unit in Khan Younis, at the southern end of the strip, according to medical sources at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital.

There was no immediate Israeli comment.

HEAVY FIGHTING AROUND MAJOR REFUGEE CAMP

Witnesses also reported bouts of heavy fighting between Hamas gunmen and Israeli forces trying to advance into north Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, home to 100,000 people and, according to Israel, a significant militant stronghold.

Repeated Israeli bombardment of Jabalia, an urban extension of Gaza City that grew out of a camp for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Israeli-arab war, has killed scores of civilians, Palestinian medics say.

The Israeli military issued a statement with video of airstrikes and troops going house-to-house in Gaza, saying they killed three Hamas company commanders and a squad of Palestinian fighters, without giving specific locations.

Hamas, meanwhile, said on its Telegram account that it had launched a barrage of missiles toward Tel Aviv. Witnesses also reported rockets being fired at central Israel.

Despite continued fighting, U.S. and Israeli officials said a Qatari-mediated deal was edging closer to free some hostages.

U.S. President Joe Biden said he believed a deal was near.