Israel-Hamas war live: Hamas suspends hostage negotiations after Israeli military encircles al-Shifa hospital | Israel-Hamas war

Al-Shifa hospital head of surgery: ‘I am afraid that all of the babies will lose their lives’

Ruth Michaelson

(Warning: this post contains distressing images)

Inside a darkened operating theatre in Gaza’s largest hospital complex, staff swaddled dozens of tiny premature babies eight to a bed, in a desperate effort to keep the infants warm – and alive.

With no oxygen supplies or power for incubators, nurses attempted to provide what little care they could for 39 babies who were transferred from the neonatal unit in another part of the sprawling complex following a strike on Dar al-Shifa’s intensive care unit.

Just getting them to the theatre was a potentially deadly mission after staff reported strikes on anyone moving inside the hospital compound.

“The neonatal unit is not connected to the main surgical units within the al-Shifa medical complex; it was dangerous to go from the main building to get the babies,” said doctor Marwan Abu Sada, head of surgery at al-Shifa, once considered the heart of Gaza’s healthcare system, now operating under fire.

“We called the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Israelis just to ensure the passage of the babies from the neonatal ICU to the surgical area.”

36 infants managed to survive the transfer, but their conditions worsened over the weekend. “We lost the life of one baby today, yesterday we lost two and I am afraid that all of the babies will lose their lives,” said Abu Sada.

Al-Shifa previously had the largest neonatal unit in Gaza and nowhere else could care for the infants, he said, making evacuation impossible. “We no longer have any oxygen supplies or even fuel to run a generator,” he said.

Hospitals across Gaza City are in a struggle for survival, with only one facility able to receive hundreds of wounded people arriving daily. Staff in Dar al-Shifa, the largest medical facility in the territory, were working under Israeli bombardment and without power, clean water, or food.

“Shifa is besieged: no one can get out, and no one can enter,” said Abu Sada. “It is dangerous for us, even the medical staff, to look out the window. We are so afraid of the shooting,” he said.

Amid fears of sniper fire, hospital staff have moved all 600 remaining patients away from the windows and into corridors deeper inside the complex.

Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, maintained Sunday that the White House does not believe Israel intends to re-occupy Gaza after its ongoing war there with Hamas – even as the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemingly suggested his country would refuse to accept Palestinian rule there.

CNN State of the Union host Dana Bash told Sullivan on Sunday that to her it “sounds like an Israeli occupation of Gaza” was a likely outcome of the war that Israel launched after the attack by Hamas on 7 October.

“Is that where this is going?” Bash asked Sullivan.

Sullivan replied: “This is not our understanding of the Israel government’s position.”

“The American position on this is straightforward. Secretary [of state Antony] Blinken laid it out this past week: no reoccupation of Gaza, no reduction in the territory of Gaza, no forcible displacement of Palestinians. And Gaza should never be allowed to be used as a base for terrorist attacks against Israel or anyone else,” he continued.

Those remarks did not seem to comfortably align with ones Netanyahu made to Bash separately on Sunday.

“The first thing we … will do … [is] destroy Hamas. The second thing we have to understand is that there has to be an overriding and overreaching Israeli military envelope because we have seen any place that we leave – we just exit, give to some other force – very soon, terrorism resurgence, so we have achieved nothing,” he said.

Netanyahu then went on to accuse the state of Palestine of failing to “demilitarize” or “de-radicalize” Hamas-ruled Gaza before adding: “We have to do it.”

Bash asked Netanyahu: “So, if not the [state of Palestine], then who?”

Netanyahu, without elaborating, said: “There has to be a reconstructed civilian authority. There has to be something else.”

“Let’s create a different reality there,” he added.

Adam Gabbatt

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will not stop its fighting around al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, where there have been multiple reports of people being shot as they attempted to flee the facility.

In an interview with CNN’s State of the Union, Netanyahu was asked how Israel, which claims Hamas are sheltering in the hospital, would ensure sick and injured people would not be caught up in Israeli attacks.

“Well, we’ve called to evacuate all the patients from that hospital and in fact 100 or so have already been evacuated,” Netanyahu said.

Earlier today the Guardian reported that an extension to the intensive care unit had been bombarded, while dead and injured people were still lying on the ground at the hospital entrance. There are 39 babies in the neonatal intensive care unit.

Netanyahu did not elaborate on how Palestinians should evacuate seriously ill people from al-Shifa hospital and other besieged hospitals in Gaza.

“We’re telling them to leave,” Netanyahu said.

“[We’re] helping them by creating safe corridors. So we have designated routes to a safe zone, south of Gaza City where there’s no fighting and we’re telling them: ‘Go ahead, move.’”

Netanyahu said he would not implement longer “humanitarian pauses” of several days, if “large groups” of Israeli hostages were freed. The US has called for Israel to implement three-day long pauses in its fighting in Gaza, in order to allow Palestinians to escape the worst-hit areas.

“That’s not a pause. If you’re talking about stopping the fighting, that’s exactly what Hamas wants,” Netanyahu said.

It is 5pm in Gaza City and in Tel Aviv. Here are the latest headlines …

• Hamas on Sunday said it was suspending hostage negotiations because of Israel’s handling of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, a Palestinian official briefed on the hostage talks has told Reuters. Israel’s three major TV news channels, without citing named sources, had reported there was some progress toward a deal, which would involve 50 to 100 women, children and elderly being released in stages during a three- to five-day pause in fighting.

• The World Health Organization said late on Saturday it had lost communication with its contacts in al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza, and expressed “grave concerns” for the safety of everyone trapped there by the fighting while calling for an immediate ceasefire. “As horrifying reports of the hospital facing repeated attacks continue to emerge, we assume our contacts joined tens of thousands of displaced people and are fleeing the area,” it said in a post on social media. The hospital’s last generator ran out of fuel on Saturday, causing the death of a premature baby, another child in an incubator and four other patients, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

• Israel military spokesperson Lt Col Richard Hecht said plans to try to evacuate babies from the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza were still being “developed”. On Saturday the Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari said: “We will provide the assistance needed” to remove the babies from the hospital.

• The Palestine Red Crescent Society announced on Sunday that the al-Quds hospital in the Gaza Strip was “out of service and no longer operational”. It stated that “the cessation of services is due to the depletion of available fuel and power outage”.

• The Hamas-run health authority in Gaza has said it is unable to issue updated casualty statistics in the Gaza Strip “due to the targeting of hospitals”.

• The Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy has accused international agencies operating within Gaza of actively putting Palestinian civilians’ lives at risk. Specifically naming the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory, Levy said: “For a month, they’ve refused to support an evacuation from north. Now they’re endangering everyone by requiring a hasty evacuation in the middle of ground urban warfare.”

• 13 people have reportedly been killed in an attack on a residential building in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, in the area that Israel is ordering Palestinians to move to. Al Jazeera’s correspondent Hani Mahmoud reports that one the family members who survived the attack said “the ground was shaking underneath their feet before the explosion took place and destroyed the building”.

• An Israeli ambulance service spokesperson has told Israel’s N12 News that one civilian was critically wounded and between three and five others injured by fire into Israel from Lebanon on Sunday morning. The Israeli military said it was retaliating with artillery fire, after the civilians were hit by anti-tank missiles.

• Egyptian security sources told Reuters that on Sunday at least seven injured Palestinians arrived on Egyptian soil through the Rafah border crossing, and that 32 Egyptians crossed over, alongside 80 foreign nationals and dependents. Russians and Poles were among those said to have crossed. Egyptian security sources also told the news agency that at least 80 aid trucks had moved from Egypt into Gaza by Sunday afternoon.

• Pope Francis on Sunday called for the wounded in Gaza to be taken care of immediately and the protection of civilians to be assured, along with more humanitarian aid for the territory and the freeing of hostages held by Hamas.

Hamas on Sunday said it was suspending hostage negotiations because of Israel’s handling of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, a Palestinian official briefed on the hostage talks has told Reuters.

More details soon …