Babies moved from ‘Death Zone’ hospital that Israel says was a Hamas hideout

Taken together, Israeli military officials said, the videos are strong evidence that Hamas used the hospital area as part of its military operations.

Israeli forces continue operations at Al-Shifa, Admiral Daniel Hagari, a military spokesman, said in a statement. Their top priority, he said, was to uncover information about the more than 200 hostages Hamas took hostage on October 7.

Israel and Hamas are trying to reach an agreement to pause the fighting so the hostages can be released. But Jon Finer, President Biden’s deputy national security adviser, warned on Sunday that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” and that the fragile negotiations could fail.

The evacuation of the babies from Al-Shifa on Sunday was carried out “under extremely intense and risky security conditions”, a day after Israeli forces allowed a UN team to tour the hospital for an hour, the director general of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said.

The babies were in “rapidly deteriorating” condition following the “total collapse” of medical services at the hospital, but “their condition is now being stabilized,” UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, said in a statement on Sunday.

Health officials tried to reunite the babies with their families — but that may be impossible in some cases. Some were born to mothers who later died in airstrikes or died shortly after giving birth, Al-Shifa doctors say.

On Sunday, Gaza’s Health Ministry published a list of the 31 babies and called on relatives to go to the hospital in Rafah to identify them. They said the parents might join the babies in Egypt.

When the UN team visited Al-Shifa on Saturday, 291 patients were present there, according to the WHO. It said several patients had died because medical services were closed and heavy fighting raged nearby.

Members of the UN team found “obvious” signs of shelling and gunfire at the hospital, as well as a mass grave at the entrance that they were told contained more than 80 bodies, the WHO said.