Heavy fighting reported around Gaza’s al-Shifa and Nasser hospitals

Smoke rises near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Thursday. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Heavy fighting took place around two key hospitals in Gaza on Thursday, while a third was reportedly under Israeli siege, amid mounting international concern for the safety of patients, civilians and remaining medical staff in the facilities.

The most intense fighting once again appeared to be focused on the al-Shifa complex, Gaza City’s main hospital before the war, where the Israeli army said it continued to operate around the site after storming it more than a week ago.

Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles have also massed around Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, the Gaza health ministry said, adding that shots were fired but no raid had yet been launched. The Red Crescent said thousands of people were trapped inside.

Israeli forces were also blockading al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, and several other areas in the city had come under Israeli fire, residents said.

The Israel Defense Forces claim to have killed about 200 gunmen in the area of al-Shifa hospital since the start of the operation there, “while preventing harm to civilians, patients, medical teams, and medical equipment”.

Early on Thursday, the Israeli army said militants had fired on troops from within and outside the hospital’s emergency ward.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said wounded people and patients were being held inside an administration building in al-Shifa that was not equipped to provide them with healthcare, adding that five patients had died since the Israeli raid because of shortages of food, water and medical care.

Unverified footage on social media showed al-Shifa’s surgery unit blackened by flames, and nearby apartments on fire or destroyed.

The armed wings of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups said in a statement they had “bombed, with a barrage of mortar shells, gatherings of Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of the al-Shifa complex” in a joint operation.

The claims of neither side could be independently verified.

The Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC) said seven people working for the organisation who were arrested in a raid on al-Amal hospital on 9 February had finally been released after 47 days in Israeli prisons.

Among them was the director of ambulance and emergency services in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Abu Musabeh. Eight members of the association were still being detained, the PRC said in a statement.

The World Health Organization said al-Amal hospital had ceased to function as a result of the fighting, leaving only 10 of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip partly operational.

The WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote on X on Thursday: “Once more, WHO demands an immediate end to attacks on hospitals in Gaza, and calls for protection of health staff, patients, and civilians.”

A series of harrowing eyewitness reports from international medical teams who visited healthcare facilities have emerged in recent days.

On Thursday a team of doctors who visited al-Aqsa hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza told the Associated Press that a toddler there had died from a brain injury caused by an Israeli strike that fractured his skull, while his infant cousin is fighting for her life with part of her face blown off by the same strike.

The team said a 10-year-old boy, who was not related, screamed out in pain for his parents, not knowing that they had been killed in the strike; he did not recognise his sister beside him, because burns covered almost her entire body, they said.

“I spend most of my time here resuscitating children,” said Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive-care doctor from Jordan who has extensive experience in Gaza and often speaks out about the war’s devastating effects. “What does that tell you about every other hospital in the Gaza Strip?”

The UN reported late on Wednesday that famine was “ever closer to becoming a reality in northern Gaza” and that the territory’s health system was collapsing owing to the continuing hostilities and “access constraints”.

On Thursday the Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Mustafa, formed a new cabinet in which he will also serve as foreign minister, making an immediate ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza a top priority, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Mustafa, an ally to the president, Mahmoud Abbas, and a leading business figure, was appointed premier this month with a mandate to help reform the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The authority’s forces were driven from Gaza when Hamas seized power in 2007, and it has no power there. The US has called for a revitalised authority to administer postwar Gaza before eventual statehood. Israel has rejected that idea, saying it would maintain open-ended security control over Gaza.

On the diplomatic front the White House said it was working to rearrange a visit by an Israeli delegation to Washington that was abruptly cancelled by Benjamin Netanyahu after the US decision not to veto a UN security council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages held by militants.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, confirmed reports that the Israeli prime minister had climbed down over the visit and agreed to reschedule it. “We’re now working with them to find a convenient date that’s obviously going to work for both sides,” she said.

Netanyahu has come in for withering criticism domestically over his handling of relations with Israel’s most important military and diplomatic ally, which came to a head after the security council vote on Monday.

Following the vote, Netanyahu’s office cancelled a visit to Washington by a delegation led by the Israeli strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, and national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, to discuss Israel’s planned military operation against the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which the US opposes.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report