Israel-Hamas war – live: IDF enters Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital

Fighting has raged for days around the Al Shifa Hospital complex at the centre of Gaza City that has seen it “turned into a cemetery,” its director said in a statement.

The Gaza health ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since Al Shifa’s emergency generator ran out of fuel on Saturday. Another 36 babies are at risk of dying because there is no power for incubators, according to the ministry.

The Israeli military said it started an effort to transfer incubators to Al Shifa. But they would be useless without electricity, said Christian Lindmeier, a World Health Organization spokesperson.

The health ministry has proposed evacuating the hospital with the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross and transferring the patients to hospitals in Egypt, but has not received any response, spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said.

While Israel says it is willing to allow staff and patients to evacuate, some Palestinians who have made it out say Israeli forces have fired at evacuees.

Inside some of the newly captured buildings, soldiers held up the Israeli flag and military flags in celebration. In a nationally televised news conference, defense minister Yoav Gallant said Hamas had “lost control” of northern Gaza and that Israel 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.”One Israeli commander in Gaza, identified only as Lt Col Gilad, said in a video that his forces near Al Shifa Hospital had seized government buildings, schools and residential buildings where they found weapons and eliminated fighters.

The army said it captured the legislature, the Hamas police headquarters and a compound housing Hamas’ military intelligence headquarters. The buildings are powerful symbols, but their strategic value was unclear. Hamas fighters are believed to be in underground bunkers.

For days, the Israeli army had encircled the hospital. 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.

Israeli defense officials also said they will allow fuel shipments into the Gaza Strip for humanitarian operations.

That announcement came hours after the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees said its fuel reserves in Gaza ran dry yesterday. Meanwhile, Israeli army have entered Gaza’s Shifa hospital, after it accused Hamas of setting up its main command center in and beneath Shifa hospital.Both Hamas and Shifa hospital staff deny the Israeli allegations.

Israel had refused to allow fuel shipments into Gaza following Hamas’s deadly 7 October incursion into southern Israel that set off the war, saying the militant group will divert any fuel for its own use.

Fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants in northern Gaza has caused 200,000 people to flee south in the past 10 days, the UN humanitarian agency yesterday. More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes since the war began.

More than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. About 2,700 people have been reported missing.

More than 1,200 people in Israel died, most of them in the Hamas attack, and about 240 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by Palestinian militants.

After four failed attempts, the UN Security Council is trying for a fifth time to come up with a resolution on the Israel-Hamas war, but it remains to be seen whether serious divisions can be overcome to produce a consensus on wording.

The current draft under negotiation would demand “immediate extended humanitarian pauses” throughout the Gaza Strip to provide civilians with desperately needed aid. It also would demand that “all parties” comply with international humanitarian law that requires protection for civilians, calls for special protections for children, and bans hostage-taking.

But the draft proposed by council member Malta makes no mention of a ceasefire. It also doesn’t refer to Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on 7 October that killed around 1,200 people and took some 240 others hostage. Nor does it cite Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes and ground offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza that the Gaza health ministry says has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children.

The 15-member council, which has the responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, has been paralysed since the war began by its internal divisions. This is especially the case between China and Russia, which want an immediate ceasefire, and the United States, Israel’s closest ally, that has called for humanitarian pauses but objects to any mention of a ceasefire.

Hamas said on Wednesday that the US announcement had effectively given a “green light” for Israel to raid the hospital. The group said it held Israel and US president Joe Biden fully responsible for the operation.

Mr Biden was due to speak at a fundraiser a few hours after the raid.

Just hours before Israel said its forces had entered Al Shifa, the White House said it had its own intelligence that Hamas was using hospitals to run its military operations and store weapons.

However, national security spokesperson John Kirby said the US does not support either air strikes or ground operations being conducted against the medical facility.

“We do not want to see a firefight in a hospital where innocent people, helpless people, sick people are simply trying to get the medical care they deserve,” he added.

Israel has said that Hamas has a command centre underneath Al Shifa and uses the hospital and tunnels beneath it to conceal military operations and to hold hostages. Hamas denies it.

In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said: “Based on intelligence information and an operational necessity, IDF forces are carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa hospital.”

The military added: “The IDF forces include medical teams and Arabic speakers, who have undergone specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment, with the intent that no harm is caused to the civilians.”

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told CNN the hospital and compound were for Hamas “a central hub of their operations, perhaps even the beating heart and maybe even a centre of gravity.

The Israeli military said it was carrying out a raid against Hamas militants in Al Shifa Hospital, having urged them to surrender, with thousands of Palestinian civilians still sheltering inside Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital.

Dr Munir al-Bursh, director-general of the Gaza health ministry, told Al Jazeera television that Israeli forces had raided the western side of the medical complex.

“There are big explosions and dust entered the areas where we are. We believe an explosion occurred inside the hospital,” Dr Bursh said.

Less than an hour earlier, around 1am local time, a Gaza health ministry spokesman said Israel had told officials in the enclave that it would raid the Al Shifa hospital complex “in the coming minutes.”

Israel says it has launched a “targeted” operation in Gaza‘s largest hospital as Palestinian health officials said forces “stormed” the besieged complex in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The hospital administration reported that after days of siege they were informed early on Wednesday that Israeli troops would raid the complex “within minutes”, shortly before reporting intense gunfire inside the walls of the hospital.

Our chief international correspondent Bel Trew reports: