Heavy fighting rages near main Gaza hospital

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday his country offered fuel to Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, which has suspended operations amid fierce fighting with Hamas, but that the terrorist group refused to receive it.

Speaking to CNN, Netanyahu said that “100 or so” people had been evacuated from Shifa and that Israel had created safe corridors.

A day after Netanyahu said Israel was bringing its “full force” with the aim of ending Hamas’ 16-year rule in Gaza, residents reported heavy airstrikes and shelling, including around Shifa Hospital.

Israel has accused Hamas of concealing a command post inside and under the compound, allegations denied by Hamas terrorists and hospital staff.

The hospital’s last generator ran out of fuel Saturday, leading to the deaths of three premature babies and four other patients, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It said another 36 babies are at risk of dying.

Israel’s military placed 634 pints of fuel near Shifa overnight for an emergency generator for incubators for premature babies and coordinated the delivery with hospital officials.

“Sadly, they haven’t taken the fuel yet,” spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said. He said if this fuel doesn’t work, they will seek “other solutions for the babies.”

The military said troops would assist in moving babies on Sunday.

But Medical Aid for Palestinians, a U.K.-based charity that has supported Shifa’s neonatal intensive care unit for years, questioned that.

“The transfer of critically ill neonates is a complex and technical process,” CEO Melanie Ward said in a statement. “With ambulances unable to reach the hospital … and no hospital with capacity to receive them, there is no indication of how this can be done safely.”

Alarm was growing.

“We do not want to see a firefight in a hospital where innocent people, helpless people, people seeking medical care are caught in the crossfire,” President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told ABC’s “This Week.”

“Decisive international action is needed now to secure an immediate humanitarian cease-fire” amid attacks on health care, the U.N. regional directors of the World Health Organization and others said in a statement, adding that more than half of Gaza’s hospitals are closed.

Netanyahu has dismissed international calls for a cease-fire unless it includes the release of all the 239 hostages captured by Hamas in the Oct. 7 rampage that triggered the war.

Netanyahu has said the responsibility for any harm to civilians lies with Hamas. Israel has long accused the group, which operates in dense residential neighborhoods, of using civilians as human shields.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Netanyahu has begun to outline Israel’s postwar plans for Gaza, which contrast with the vision put forth by the United States.

He says Gaza would be demilitarized and Israel would retain the ability to enter Gaza freely to hunt down terrorists. He rejects the idea that the Palestinian Authority, which currently administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would at some stage control Gaza. Hamas drove the PA’s forces out of Gaza in 2007.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the U.S. opposes an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and envisions a unified Palestinian government in Gaza and the West Bank as a step toward a Palestinian state.

The U.S. has pushed for temporary pauses that would allow for wider distribution of aid to civilians in the territory.

Israel has agreed to brief daily periods during which civilians can flee the area of ground combat in northern Gaza and head south on foot along two main roads. Israel continues to strike what it says are terrorist targets across southern Gaza.

Hospital officials said at least 13 were killed after an Israeli airstrike destroyed a building in the southern town of Khan Younis.

The war has displaced over two-thirds of Gaza’s population, with most fleeing south.

Wael Abu Omar, spokesperson for Gaza’s border crossings, said 846 people left Gaza to Egypt through the Rafah crossing Sunday, of which 826 were foreigners. The rest included wounded, patients from Gaza’s hospitals and their caretakers.

He said 76 aid trucks entered Gaza.

At least 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly civilians killed in the initial Hamas terrorist attack. Forty-six Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began.

About 250,000 Israelis have evacuated from communities near Gaza, where Palestinian terrorists are still firing barrages of rockets, and along the northern border with Lebanon.

More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilian and terrorist deaths. About 2,700 people have been reported missing.

Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Amy Teibel in Jerusalem, Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.