CAIRO: Israeli shelling hit a hospital in northern Gaza, wounding several people, damaging equipment, and disrupting surgeries, Palestinian health officials said on Sunday.
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the town of Beit Lahiya — one of only three barely operational on the northern edge of the enclave — said the facility was struck by about 100 tank shells and bombs late on Saturday.
“The situation is extremely dangerous. We have patients in the intensive care unit and others awaiting surgeries. Access to the operating rooms is only possible after restoring electricity and oxygen supply,” Abu Safiya said in a statement.
He said the hospital is currently treating 112 wounded people, including six in the intensive care unit.
Israel’s military said it had conducted a review and found that its forces had not struck in the vicinity of the hospital or damaged any of its essential equipment.
Israel’s army “is in continuous coordination with hospital officials to provide humanitarian assistance to the hospital and maintain a consistent liaison,” the military said.
The Health Ministry of Gaza said a doctor was killed with his family in an Israeli airstrike near the hospital on Saturday night.
Residents said the military blew up clusters of houses on Sunday in the northern Gaza areas of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, where Israeli forces have operated since October.
Later in the day, an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinians in the heart of Gaza City, taking the number of people killed in separate military strikes across the enclave to 11, medics said.
Palestinians say Israel’s operations on the northern edge of the enclave are part of a plan to clear people out through forced evacuations and bombardments to create a buffer zone. The Israeli military denies this, saying it is fighting Hamas.
The war in Gaza has been raging for over 14 months, with much of the enclave laid to waste and more than 44,000 Palestinians killed, according to Gaza health authorities, as Israeli forces continue their drive to wipe out Hamas and rescue hostages taken by the militant group.
The deadliest Israeli-Palestinian violence in decades began when Hamas stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Hamas and its allies took 251 people captive.
A total of 96 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead.
A one-week truce in November 2023 saw dozens of hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, but since then negotiations have failed to make a breakthrough.
Sources within militant groups in Gaza said on Sunday that Hamas had told them to compile information on the hostages they hold in preparation for a ceasefire and hostage-release deal with Israel.
The sources said Hamas told factions, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front, and the Popular Resistance Committees, to prepare information such as whether their hostages were alive or dead.
A Hamas source said there had been “intensified contacts” recently between Hamas and Qatari, Egyptian and Turkish mediators, and that the group expected a new round of talks in Cairo “will begin in the coming days.”
The same source called on Israel to halt the war, saying the presence of its forces made it “difficult to reach all the captive groups to know the details of the living and dead prisoners.”
