The Albany Gazette - Gaza hospitals out of fuel, caught in fighting

Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital is caught in Israel's ground offensive aimed at destroying Hamas, and the compound has been repeatedly hit by strikes, one of which Hamas health officials said destroyed the cardiac ward on Sunday.

The Israeli military has denied deliberately targeting hospitals and has accused the Islamist militant group of using medical facilities or tunnels underneath them as hideouts -- a charge Hamas denies.

Fears intensified for Palestinians seeking shelter and patients needing treatment after Gaza City's Al-Quds hospital went out of service due to lack of generator fuel, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

"The hospital has been left to fend for itself under ongoing Israeli bombardment, posing severe risks to the medical staff, patients and displaced civilians," it added.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas fighters smashed through the militarised border with Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 people hostage, according to Israeli figures.

Israel's relentless campaign in response has killed more than 11,000 people, also mostly civilians and including thousands of children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told NBC News on Sunday a deal could be afoot to free some of the hostages but declined to provide details.

"We heard that there was an impending deal of this kind or of that kind and then we learned that it was all hokum. But the minute we started the ground operation, that began to change," Netanyahu said.

Asked whether there is a potential deal to free more of the hostages, he replied only that "there could be".

- 'No one can leave' -

Inside embattled Gaza, witnesses at the Al-Shifa hospital told AFP by phone on Sunday that "violent fighting" had raged around the hospital the whole night.

Inside Al-Shifa hospital, doctors said Saturday that two two babies had died in the neonatal unit after power to their incubators was cut off, and a man had also died when his ventilator shut down.

The Israeli military has pledged to aid the evacuation of babies from the hospital, noting that "staff of the Al-Shifa hospital has requested that tomorrow".

Military spokesman Daniel Hagari said that "we will help the babies in the paediatric department to get to a safer hospital. We will provide the assistance needed."

A "safe passage" was to be opened from Al-Shifa to allow people to flee toward the south, the Israeli military said Sunday.

Mohammad Zaqut, head of all hospitals in Gaza Strip, told AFP: "The situation in Al-Shifa is catastrophic."

"No one can enter or leave" the hospital, he added.

Twenty of Gaza's 36 hospitals are "no longer functioning", according to the UN's humanitarian agency.

Very little aid has made it into Gaza in the five weeks of war, with the densely populated coastal territory effectively sealed off by a total blockade that Israel has vowed to maintain until the hostages are freed.

The Israeli military confirmed that a Jordanian plane dropped medical equipment and food to the Jordanian Hospital in the Gaza Strip.

The army declined to elaborate further, and Israel's foreign ministry made no comment.

But as fighting raged, around 800 foreigners and dual nationals, as well as several wounded Palestinians, were evacuated from the besieged Gaza Strip to Egypt on Sunday, a Gaza border official said.

AlQahera News, an outlet close to the Egyptian intelligence services, reported the crossing of an additional "seven wounded Palestinians" through the terminal.

Rafah is the only crossing out of Gaza not controlled by Israel, and had been closed on Friday and Saturday.

Since November 1, dozens of wounded Palestinians have been evacuated to Egyptian hospitals, with hundreds of dual nationals and foreigners, including Americans, French, Russians and Poles, also leaving through Rafah.

- Thousands flee south -

Perched on trucks, crammed in cars, pulled by donkeys on carts and on foot, many thousands of Palestinians have fled Israeli army strikes on the territory squeezed between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean.

Youssef Mehna, one of many who moved south, said his sick wife is in a wheelchair so he had to rent "carts pulled by donkeys, trucks, cars" to transport her.

Sometimes, between rides, they were forced to go on foot. "So it was me who pushed my wife's chair," he told AFP.

Almost 1.6 million people have been internally displaced since October 7, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA. This equals about two-thirds of Gaza's population.

However, people arriving in the south were no longer able to find tents or improvised shelter, with some sleeping in the streets, according to AFP journalists.

Strikes were also hitting buildings at the southern end of Gaza in Rafah, the area to which civilians have been urged to evacuate.

A strike in southern Bani Suheila destroyed a dozen houses on Sunday, killing at least four people and wounded at least 30, said an AFP reporter at the scene.

- Regional tensions -

Israeli forces fired artillery into southern Lebanon on Sunday after an incoming anti-tank missile wounded several Israeli civilians near the border, an army spokesman said.

The Israeli army said "a number of civilians were wounded" in the anti-tank missile strike near the village of Dovev, just half a mile (800 metres) from the frontier with Lebanon.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday's strike but Iran-backed Shiite movement Hezbollah, as well as Hamas's Lebanese branch, have both launched attacks into southern Israel in recent weeks.

Returning from a summit in the Saudi capital Riyadh, which condemned Israeli forces' offensive in Gaza, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for pressure on the United States to stop the war.

"The West should increase pressure on Israel... It's vital for us to secure a ceasefire," he told Turkish reporters on board his return flight from Riyadh.

Israel's top ally Washington has offered some criticism of the civilian toll but has voiced support for the offensive and been against a ceasefire.

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(M.Scott--TAG)