The head of the World Health Organization said the agency has lost contact with health personnel inside the biggest hospital in Gaza after Israeli soldiers stormed the facility early Wednesday.
Troops moved into Al-Shifa Hospital after the complex had been encircled by Israeli tanks for several days, starving thousands of sheltering civilians of fuel and medical supplies. Both Israel and the U.S. say Hamas has a command center beneath the hospital—claims which Hamas has denied.
“Reports of military incursion into Al-Shifa hospital are deeply concerning,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X Wednesday. “We’ve lost touch again with health personnel at the hospital. We’re extremely worried for their and their patients’ safety.”
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) earlier confirmed it had launched “a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital,” adding that Israeli soldiers “encountered explosive devices and terrorist cells” on their way in. Several terrorists were killed during an “engagement” before troops entered the complex, the IDF added. In a later update, the Israeli military claimed soldiers “delivered humanitarian aid to the entrance of the hospital.”
A surgeon inside the hospital, Dr. Ahmed El Mohallalati, told Reuters Wednesday morning that staff were in hiding as clashes broke out outside the facility. He said “continuous shooting from the tanks” could be heard, and that the “sound was really horrible.” “And then we realized that the tanks are moving around the hospital. One of the big tanks entered within the hospital from the eastern main gate, and they were [...] they just parked in the front of the hospital emergency department.”
U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths said he was “appalled” by reports of the raid. “The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff and all civilians must override all other concerns,” he wrote on X. “Hospitals are not battlegrounds.”
According to Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office, Israeli soldiers “began shooting inside the complex” during the raid. “Panic among the wounded, sick and displaced is a war crime added to the black record of the occupation army, which is still committing various crimes and massacres,” it said in a statement. It also claimed that Israel’s purported “safe corridors” are “just dirty propaganda,” alleging that Israel killed people as they tried to leave the hospital.
The office went on to allege that Israeli forces “expelled a number of children and some patients” from the site, “depriving them of receiving treatment.”
At a news conference Wednesday, Mohammed Zaqout, the director-general of Gaza hospitals, said 650 patients need to be safely evacuated from Al-Shifa, including 22 people requiring intensive care. He said 36 premature babies and people on ventilators are now under “total threat” at the facility, and that around 400 medical teams need treatment and evacuation too.
The crisis facing Gaza’s medical system is also being worsened by the scarcity of fuel throughout the enclave during Israel’s siege. Thomas White, the director of the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, said that sewage pumps, desalination plants, and hospitals are now offline due to the lack of fuel.
On Wednesday, he said half a tanker’s worth of fuel had entered Gaza from Egypt—but that Israeli authorities had restricted its use to the transportation of aid, meaning it could not be given to bolster water supplies or hospitals. “This is only 9% of what we need daily to sustain lifesaving activities,” White said.
