KUWAIT: Thirty-one premature babies were evacuated from Gaza’s biggest hospital on Sunday, the World Health Organization said, seeking to get the last patients and staff out of what it has dubbed a "death zone”. The evacuation came as the Zionist entity said it was stepping up operations against Hamas. The death toll in Gaza has reached 13,000, with more than 5,500 children among the dead, alongside 3,500 women, with 30,000 more people wounded.
Kuwait condemned and denounced Saturday the Zionist occupation’s heinous massacre of a large number of Palestinian civilians, including children and women, by bombing the UN-run Al-Fakhoura School in Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. In a press statement, Kuwait’s foreign ministry also expressed Kuwait’s unequivocal rejection of the Zionist occupation forces’ systematic targeting of defenseless Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.
It also reiterated Kuwait’s call for an immediate stoppage of such assaults and provision of protection for Palestinian people and relief agencies operating in the Gaza Strip and their staff. The ministry also underlined the need for holding the Zionist occupation accountable for its continued violation of international humanitarian law and UN resolutions.
Sirens blared across Jerusalem to warn of rocket fire from Gaza, sending civilians scurrying for cover as loud blasts from intercepted missiles pierced the air. In Gaza, a lack of fuel to power incubators has previously led to the deaths of other vulnerable newborns at Al-Shifa hospital, according to the health ministry in the territory. Al-Shifa has become the focus of the six-week-old war that began on Oct 7.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 31 "very sick” babies were moved in a joint operation with staff from the UN and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PCRS), which used six ambulances in the transfer. The babies were taken to the Al-Helal Emirati maternity hospital, he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "They are receiving urgent care in the neonatal intensive care unit,” he added.
An AFP photographer saw the tiny infants at the hospital, some three or four to a cot, being bottle-fed by nurses and tended to by doctors in surgical scrubs. "Further missions are being planned to urgently transport remaining patients and staff out of Al-Shifa Hospital, pending guarantees of safe passage by parties to the conflict,” said Tedros. Alongside the babies, six health workers and 10 staff family members were also moved, he added.
Three Zionist soldiers were killed Saturday in fighting in northern Gaza, the military said, raising the number of troop deaths to 62 since the war began. The narrow coastal territory, under a crippling blockade since Hamas took power in 2007, has been under Zionist siege since the war erupted, leaving food, water, medicine and fuel in short supply. The fighting has rendered more than half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals non-functioning by shortages, combat or damage, the UN has said.
On Saturday, hundreds fled Al-Shifa Hospital on foot as loud explosions were heard around the complex. Columns of sick and injured were seen leaving with displaced people, doctors and nurses.
At least 15 bodies, some in advanced stages of decomposition, were strewn along the route, an AFP journalist said. The WHO said 29 patients at the hospital with serious spinal injuries cannot move without medical assistance.
The Zionist entity has told Palestinians to move south for their safety, but deadly strikes continued there too. At least 26 people were killed in a strike that hit a residential building on Saturday, according to the director of the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis. Zionist troops raided Al-Shifa Hospital earlier last week on suspicion that it was being used as a Hamas base.
The Zionist entity has been under pressure to prove its allegations that a Hamas command center is concealed beneath the hospital, a charge the militants deny. Conditions at Al-Shifa are dire, according to the WHO, with a mass grave outside and nearly 300 patients and 25 health workers inside. But it warned that nearby facilities were already overstretched and urged an immediate ceasefire given the "extreme suffering of the people of Gaza”.
Al-Shifa head of surgery Marwan Abu Sada told AFP that Zionist troops were still in the hospital and it was surrounded by tanks. "I heard at least two explosions since this morning,” he said. Doctors said Zionist troops were going from building to building and regularly detonated explosives on the ground floors and hospital basements searching for Hamas tunnels.
A Hamas health official said more than 80 people were killed on Saturday in twin strikes on Jabalia refugee camp, the territory’s largest, including on a UN school sheltering displaced people. The Zionist army said only that "an incident in the Jabalia region” was under review without elaborating. "The horrendous events of the past 48 hours in Gaza beggar belief,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement, referring to actions "which fly in the face of the basic protections civilians must be afforded under international law”.
US President Joe Biden threatened sanctions against Zionist settlers who have ramped up attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in recent weeks. Since the Zionist-Hamas war began, Zionist troops and settlers have killed more than 200 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the health ministry in Ramallah. The PRCS on Sunday reported two deaths in overnight army raids in Jenin and the Bethlehem area. – Agencies