Dozens of Israeli soldiers, some with covered faces and firing into the air, order the Gazans who have taken refuge in Al Shifa Hospital to surrender: the battle around the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip is now taking place in its wards and the floors, reports a journalist who works with AFP and is there.

Israeli soldiers shout through loudspeakers in Arabic: “All males 16 years and older, raise your hands and exit the buildings to the inner courtyard to surrender.”

According to the UN, approx 2,300 people, including patients, medical staff and displaced persons of the war are inside Al Shifa, which has been surrounded for days by Israeli tanks and personnel carriers of the Israeli army.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that they had found weapons and Hamas assets inside Al Shifa Hospital, but no sign of hostages.

According to doctors and international non-governmental organizations, none of them can go outside as they risk being shot as fighting rages around them.

This morning, Palestinians in rows with their hands in the air, gathered in the hospital courtyard, coming from the burn ward, the maternity ward, the surgical ward or even the dialysis ward, according to the journalist.

About a thousand people are now in the large yard of the hospital complex with their hands up. Some were stripped by Israeli soldiers.

Inside, the Israeli soldiers they shoot in the air going from room in a room, apparently looking for Hamas fighters.

Crying women and children are investigated. Others are forced to pass through an identification camera, such as those placed along the civilian evacuation corridors to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, according to the reporter.

For years, Israel has accused Hamas of using Gaza hospitals as bases, digging a network of tunnels under Al Shifa and using its patients as “human shields”.

Israeli tanks they are now inside the complex, having taken their place in front of various servicesincluding that of emergencies.

“A precise and targeted operation is being conducted against Hamas in a very specific area of ​​Shifa Hospital. We have soldiers trained specifically for this situation and we keep repeating that we are ONLY at war with Hamas. We continue to do everything in our power to mitigate the risk to civilians,” the IDF spokesman said..

In recent days the hospital’s generators had stopped working due to a lack of fuel — no fuel has entered Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7.

Dead patients and babies

At least 9 premature infants died after emerging from their incubators, while 27 patients in intensive care units they died because their breathing support machine stopped working, according to Hamas’ health ministry.

A mass grave has been opened inside the hospital complex and “179 bodies” have already been buried there, according to the hospital’s director, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya.

The Israeli military says it has dispatched “medical teams” and “Arabic-speaking” soldiers for its “targeted operation” in “a special zone” of Al Shifa.

This morning he also announced that he has “delivered incubators, baby food and medical supplies” as part of his “business”.

Although every day the UN, international non-governmental organizations and the World Health Organization (WHO) repeat that a hospital “should never be attacked”, for Israel the entry of its soldiers into Al Shifa does not violate international law.

For Hamas it is “a war crime and a crime against humanity”.

On October 7, the Palestinian Islamist movement launched an unprecedented attack on Israel. About 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities.

Since then, the Israeli army has been bombarding the Gaza Strip day and night from air, sea and land. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed by these strikes, according to the Hamas health ministry, two-thirds of whom are women and children.

The hospitals of Gaza

Hospitals in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, including al-Shifa, its largest enclave, have been in the line of fire in recent days between Hamas and the Israeli army, which accuses the Palestinian organization of hiding its military infrastructure there. .

Al Shifa Hospital

The largest hospital in Gaza is located in the Rimal district, in the western part of the city. According to the Hamas government, it was built in 1946 and has undergone many expansions since then.

The Israeli army launched a “targeted operation” inside the hospital last night.

A spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva spoke of a team of 400 health workers working at the hospital, where 3,000 civilians have taken refuge from the shelling.

Hamas’ deputy health minister told AFP on Sunday that an Israeli airstrike “completely destroyed” the hospital’s cardiology department building.

“Critical infrastructure” such as water tanks, maternity clinic equipment and the medical oxygen storage center have been damaged since the start of the war, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said on Sunday, adding that three nurses have be killed.

An ambulance leaving this hospital was targeted in early November by an Israeli airstrike, killing 15 people. The Israeli military accused Hamas of “using” the ambulance.

Al Quds Hospital

It started its operation at the beginning of the 2000s and has about 100 beds.

It stopped operating on Sunday, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent, which runs it. The reserves of fuel, necessary for the operation of the generators that produce electricity, had been exhausted.

Yesterday, Tuesday night, the Red Crescent announced that it had evacuated the hospital, “which has been under siege for more than ten days”, releasing images of the arrival of patients and doctors in the town of Khan Younis, further south.

On Monday, the Israeli army reported exchanges of fire between its soldiers and gunmen who had taken up positions at the entrance to the hospital, specifying that “21 terrorists were killed.”

According to Ocha, since the beginning of the war up to 14,000 people have sought refuge in this hospital.

al-Quds was targeted by airstrikes during the Israeli operation in December 2008 and January 2009. The hospital’s emergency department, like other parts of it, was rebuilt, mainly thanks to French funds.

Indonesian hospital

It started operating in 2015 with Indonesian funding and is located in Jambaliya, the huge refugee camp in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. According to its director, Atef al-Kahlot, it has 110 beds.

As the Hamas government pointed out, 30 people were killed in this hospital by Israeli shelling.

On October 28 and 29, following warnings by the Israeli army to evacuate, the area around the hospital was shelled, according to Ocha.

On November 5, the Israeli military announced that the basement of the Indonesian hospital was being used by Hamas as a command and control center. The Palestinian movement denied it.

The military also presented satellite images showing a Hamas rocket launch facility 75 meters from the hospital.

Al Radisi Hospital

Al Radisi Children’s Hospital is located near Al Shifa.

On Monday the Israeli military entered the hospital and said it had located an underground area that served as a “Hamas command and control center”, adding that it had found many weapons there.

The Israeli army also suspects that some of the hostages taken by Hamas during its attack on Israel on October 7 were being held in this basement. The Palestinian movement denounced the “staged” accusations.

On Saturday the Israeli military announced that it had killed Ahmed Shiam, “a Hamas commander”, who was “holding about 1,000 Gazans hostage in al-Radisi hospital”.

Then on Monday, he indicated that he had removed the last patients “to a more secure hospital”.

The director of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Zakut, spoke of patients “on the street, without care”, after “the forced evacuations” of the two children’s hospitals al-Nasr and al-Radisi.

In 2009 al-Radisi acquired a pediatric oncology unit—the only one in the Gaza Strip—funded in part by an American aid organization.