As fighting intensifies in southern Gaza, Palestinians flee from hospital

Dozens of displaced Palestinians fled the grounds of a hospital in southern Gaza as fighting raged Wednesday in and around the town of Khan Younis, where the Israeli army says it is trying to crush a Hamas stronghold.

Videos verified by The New York Times show families fleeing the hospital and the Nasser Medical Center in Khan Younis, carrying duffel bags, backpacks and blankets as the sound of explosions echoed. The Israeli military said this week it had detected mortar fire directed at its troops from the hospital complex, the largest in the southern Gaza Strip.

The fighting around the hospital underlines the dangers for civilians in southern Gaza as the Israeli army focuses on Khan Younis. About 7,000 people are believed to have been sheltered on the hospital grounds, the United Nations humanitarian agency said on Wednesday, adding that an “intensification of hostilities” in the area also made it harder for patients and health workers to gain access to get to the hospital. .

Many displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza have moved several times since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, an experience that has reinforced the feeling that nowhere in the enclave is safe. Gaza health authorities say more than 24,000 people, including women and children, have been killed in the enclave since then.

Hamas' Khan Younis Brigade is among the armed group's last major forces as its fighters have been largely subdued in northern Gaza, Israeli military officials said. Israeli forces, led by the army's 98th Division, have been advancing into the Palestinian city since December after the failure of a brief ceasefire with Hamas.

Civilians, many of whom fled northern Gaza following Israeli evacuation orders, have taken refuge in makeshift tent cities, crowded schools and on hospital grounds.

The fighting for southern Gaza is extremely challenging, according to Israeli military officials, because of the presence of these civilians and Hamas' tactics to entrench weapons and fighters among the population and around civilian infrastructure.

The fighting is further complicated by a network of war tunnels that Hamas has built under the enclave, sometimes running under residential areas and, in at least one known case, accessible from the grounds of a hospital.

Top Hamas leaders such as Yahya Sinwar – a native son of Khan Younis – may be hiding in fortified tunnels beneath his hometown, Israeli officials say. If so, they add, he has most likely surrounded himself with some of the more than 100 Israeli hostages still in Gaza — another stumbling block.

The southern part of the Gaza Strip is approximately eleven kilometers wide. But given Israel's difficulty in gaining control of that part of Gaza, the army said Wednesday it had air-dropped 16 tons of ammunition, fuel, water and food for its troops there.

Amid Israeli airstrikes and heavy fighting, hospitals in Gaza are struggling to cope with a seemingly constant flow of injured people, grossly inadequate medical supplies, unsanitary conditions and significant staffing problems.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that Nasser and two other major hospitals in Gaza were at risk of closure due to evacuation orders for areas next to medical facilities, and fighting nearby.

The World Health Organization reported that Nasser Hospital alone treated 700 patients on Monday, doubling its usual daily caseload, with some patients requiring floor care. Only 15 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are even partially functional, the WHO said.

Israel has accused Hamas of using hospitals for military purposes, and the raid on Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza revealed a stone and concrete tunnel shaft beneath the hospital. Israeli forces raided Al-Shifa Hospital in November, a move that Gaza Health Ministry officials said at the time put the hospital out of service.

Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army's chief spokesman, said on Tuesday that the army had noticed the launch of munitions from the Nasser complex towards Israeli soldiers. The Israeli army later clarified that he was referring to mortar fire.

“The terrorist organization Hamas is systematically operating in Gaza hospitals and nearby areas using civilians as human shields,” he wrote on social media.

Hamas denies that its fighters have used hospitals as bases for their operations.

The Times was unable to reach medical workers at the hospital on Wednesday as a near-total communications blackout in the Gaza Strip continued for a sixth straight day, leaving besieged civilians unable to call for help and aid workers struggling to reach them amid Israeli airstrikes. rained in the south.

Paltel, the Gaza Strip's largest telecommunications company, said the power outage was the longest of several Gaza situations since the start of the war.

Airstrikes and fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants in Khan Younis have been so intense that repair crews have had difficulty reaching the damaged sites, Paltel said. Last week, two of its employees, who were making repairs, were killed when a company car was shot at, Paltel said, adding that it had coordinated the repairs with Israeli authorities in advance. The Israeli military said the episode had been referred for investigation.

Even as fighting continued, some officials looked forward to rebuilding once hostilities ended. Rebuilding homes will cost at least $15 billion, Mohammad Mustafa, the chairman of the Palestine Investment Fund, whose board is appointed by the president of the Palestinian Authority, said on Wednesday. Speaking at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, Mr Mustafa said the estimate did not take into account damaged or destroyed hospitals and infrastructure.

US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who was also in Davos, said on Wednesday that civilian suffering in Gaza was “heartbreaking” and that US officials had spoken to Israeli officials about their responsibility to minimize civilian casualties and facilitate humanitarian assistance. staff.

Mr. Blinken's comments, while couched in unusually sharp language, were also a defense of the Biden administration's approach to the conflict, in which it has strongly supported Israel's war against Hamas while pressuring Israeli officials to limit harm to Palestinian civilians.

“The suffering we see among innocent men, women and children breaks my heart,” he said in response to questions from The Times columnist Thomas Friedman. “The question is: what needs to be done?”

“We assessed how we thought we could be most effective in shaping this in ways to get more humanitarian assistance to people, get better protection and minimize civilian casualties,” he continued. “Every step along the way, not only have we brought home to Israel its responsibilities to do that, we've also seen some progress in areas where, without our involvement, I don't think it would have happened.”

Mr Blinken's comments were in line with the US government's broad political and military support for Israel's military offensive in Gaza, which began after the Hamas-led attack on October 7 killed around 1,200 people and took more than 200 others hostage , Israeli officials said. .

Also on Wednesday, the Israeli army said it had killed a Palestinian militant commander, Abdullah Abu Shalal, along with several fellow fighters in the occupied West Bank in an airstrike on their vehicle.

The military described Mr Abu Shalal as the commander of a militant cell in the city of Nablus that was planning an “imminent” attack on Israelis. Palestinian officials said the men were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group loosely affiliated with Fatah, the dominant Palestinian political faction in the West Bank.

Reporting was contributed by Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Approach Ibrahim, Malachy Browne, Anushka Patil, Roni Caryn Rabin And Gabby Sobelman.