The director of the only major hospital in the northern Gaza Strip now offering specialised care for children has described a “catastrophic situation” as Israeli forces launched new ground assaults and airstrikes in the north and centre of the territory.
Dr Husam Abu Safiyeh, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, said it had not been possible to comply with an Israeli army order to evacuate all patients within 24 hours.
“We have seven cases in intensive care … all these cases are very severe and they all need intensive surgical or medical care,” he said. “Moving or transporting these patients puts their life in serious danger, it is not possible to transfer them. In addition, there is no facility in Gaza that has capacity to take them as they are all overrun with their own similar cases.”
The latest raids and strikes came on the sixth day of an Israeli offensive centred on the devastated cities of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun and the Jabaliya refugee camp, all of which experienced heavy fighting in the first months of the war. The offensive has trapped hundreds of thousands of civilians in fast-deteriorating conditions.
Farther south, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the central town of Deir al-Balah killed at least 26 people, including a child and seven women, Palestinian officials said on Thursday.
Dr Eid Sabah, the director of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan hospital, which offers paediatric intensive care facilities and a malnutrition clinic, said a fleet of ambulances evacuated some but not all of its patients.
The hospital is now running short of medical supplies as well as diesel for its generators, which means electricity and oxygen shortages. Doctors said 100 dead and more than 300 injured had been brought into the facility in recent days, including many children. “Until this moment, none of the workers inside the hospital was able to leave it due to the danger of the bombing,” Sabah said.
Israeli forces issued evacuation orders to civilians in Jabaliya and other parts of Gaza before launching their operations but one resident in Jabaliya said they had been trapped in their homes by fighting and food was running out.
Heba Abu Habl, who has three daughters and two sons, has been displaced 18 times since first leaving Beit Lahiya early in the war, and is now stuck in Jabaliya.
“We have been trapped for days and we don’t know where to go. All places are dangerous and are subjected to heavy and indiscriminate bombardment. In the end we decided to stay where we are … but we don’t have water or food and we cannot sleep at night because of the intensity of the bombing,” Abu Habl, 38, said.
Gaza’s health ministry said it recovered 40 bodies from Jabaliya, a densely populated neighbourhood in northern Gaza, between Sunday and Tuesday, and another 14 from communities farther north.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, said on X on Wednesday that at least 400,000 people were trapped in Jabaliya. “Many are refusing [to evacuate] because they know too well that no place anywhere in Gaza is safe,” he added.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the attack on the school in Deir al-Balah. Witnesses said the strike targeted a makeshift post of the Hamas-run police inside the shelter.
Israel has repeatedly attacked schools turned shelters in Gaza, accusing militants of deliberately using the population as a human shield. Hamas has denied the charge. Numerous strikes have targeted police in Gaza, who Israeli officials argue are part of Hamas, and who have now largely withdrawn from the streets.
On Thursday, UN investigators accused Israel of deliberately targeting health facilities and killing and torturing medical personnel in Gaza.
“Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza,” the UN independent international commission of inquiry said in a statement.
Israeli officials say its forces do not target civilians and accuse Hamas of building command centres under hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. Hamas denies the charge.
The Israeli military said the latest raid was intended to stop Hamas fighters staging further attacks from Jabaliya and to prevent them from regrouping. Though the group has suffered significant losses, Hamas has continued to launch attacks on Israeli forces and fire occasional rockets into Israel in recent months. Israeli forces have had to return to many areas earlier cleared of militants.
R Adm Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, said Israeli forces in Jabaliya had killed about 100 militants, without providing evidence.
The death toll from the Israeli offensive in the territory has passed 42,000. More than two-thirds of those killed are women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities’ data. The statistics do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
The war began on 7 October last year when waves of Hamas militants broke through Israel’s security fence and attacked army bases and farming communities, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Hamas is still holding about 100 captives inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
The conflict has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.