Calls grow to evacuate Gaza’s largest hospital as Israel and Hamas battle just outside
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Palestinian authorities on Tuesday called for a cease-fire to evacuate three dozen newborns and other patients trapped inside Gaza’s biggest hospital as Israeli forces battled Hamas in the streets just outside and seized more ground across northern Gaza.
For days, the Israeli army has encircled Shifa Hospital, the facility it says Hamas hides in, and beneath, to use civilians as shields for its main command base.
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Hospital staff and Hamas deny the claim. Meanwhile, hundreds of patients, staff and displaced people were trapped inside, with supplies dwindling and no electricity to run incubators and other lifesaving equipment. After days without refrigeration, morgue staff on Tuesday dug a mass grave in the yard for more than 120 bodies, officials said.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said in a nationally televised news conference Tuesday night that Hamas has “lost control” of northern Gaza and that Israel has made significant gains in Gaza City. But asked about the time frame for the war, Gallant said: “We’re talking about long months, not a day or two.”
Israel has vowed to crush Hamas rule in Gaza after the militants’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel in which they killed some 1,200 people and took roughly 240 hostages. But even as its troops control more of devastated northern Gaza, the Israeli government has acknowledged it doesn’t know what it will do with the territory after Hamas’ defeat.
The onslaught — one of the most intense bombardments so far this century — has been disastrous for Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians.
More than 11,200 people, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah. About 2,700 people have been reported missing. The ministry’s count does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths.
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BATTLE IN GAZA CITY
Independent accounts of the fighting in Gaza City have been nearly impossible to gather, as communications to the north have largely collapsed.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces have completed the takeover of Shati refugee camp, a densely built district bordering Gaza City’s center, and are moving about freely in the city as a whole.
Videos released by the Israeli military show troops moving through the city, firing into buildings. Bulldozers push down structures as tanks roll through streets surrounded by partially collapsed towers.
The videos portray a battle where troops are rooting out pockets of Hamas fighters and tearing down buildings they find them in, while gradually dismantling the group’s tunnel network.
Israel says it has killed several thousand fighters, including important mid-level commanders, while 46 of its own soldiers have been killed in Gaza. In recent days Hamas rocket fire into Israel — constant throughout the war — has waned, though two people were wounded Tuesday in a rocket attack on Tel Aviv. Details of the Israeli account and the extent of Hamas losses could not be independently confirmed.
