GENEVA: The UN children’s charity called on Monday for an immediate evacuation to save at least 25 ill or premature babies in incubators in Gaza City as Israel steps up its ground offensive, shelling a hospital housing around half of them.
Palestinian health officials say tanks are surrounding the area near Al-Helo Hospital, where at least 12 babies are in incubators.
Medics said the site was shelled. Video obtained by Reuters showed hospital rooms and beds there strewn with debris. “It is time to move them because Gaza City again has become a combat zone, but moving them where? There is no safe place for them to go,” said UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires.
Evacuation of the babies, many of them newborns, will mean moving them to makeshift carts, wrapped in blankets with portable oxygen supplies and drips, Pires said.
Still, they could be exposed to infection, variable temperatures, or supplies could run out during the transfer.
“Moving them seems like the best option we have now ... but at the same time, it’s a very risky one.”
Pires was in Gaza City last month, where he saw one of the babies — a premature girl named Narges who, he said, had been removed from the womb of her dead mother, who had been shot in the head.
“We’re very concerned not only about her, but all the other babies,” he said, saying efforts to reach her father and her doctors since the shelling had been unsuccessful.
In Gaza City, there are more babies than incubators, and some of them are sharing, he said, adding that Israel had denied some requests to import more. Pires said he saw four in one incubator last month.
Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have been displaced by the offensive on Gaza’s famine-struck north, where shortages are worsening.
Israel has said it will not halt fighting unless Hamas frees all hostages and permanently surrenders. The assault on Gaza City has worsened a dire humanitarian crisis that has increased Israel’s international isolation.
Several Western countries, including Britain and France have recognized Palestinian independence, defying Israeli objections.
Israeli tanks advanced on Monday to within a few hundred meters of Gaza City’s main Al-Shifa Hospital, where doctors say hundreds of patients were still being treated despite Israeli orders to leave.
Israel has said it will not halt fighting unless Hamas frees all hostages and permanently surrenders its weapons.
Hamas says it is willing to free its hostages in return for an end to the war, but will not give up its arms as long as Palestinians are still fighting for a state.
In Israel’s latest offensive, troops have flattened Gaza City neighborhoods, dynamiting buildings which they said were used by Hamas.
Hundreds of thousands of residents have fled, though many say there is nowhere to go. Israel has told them to head south, where other cities have already been razed.
The military said in a Monday statement it was continuing to target militant groups.
Medics said the military had killed at least 18 people across Gaza on Monday, most of them in Gaza City.
Previous ceasefire efforts have fallen apart due to a failure to bridge the gaps between Israel and Hamas.
Netanyahu’s far-right allies in the Israeli government want the war to continue until Hamas has been defeated. But the Gaza City offensive is also a source of domestic political tension, with families of hostages saying it is time to seek a peace deal to bring their loved ones home.
The Hostages Families Forum, representing many relatives of those held captive in Gaza, sent a letter to Trump ahead of his meeting with Netanyahu, urging him not to let anyone sabotage the deal he is putting forward to end the war.
“The stakes are too high, and our families have waited too long for any interference to derail this progress,” they wrote.
