Thir­ty-one “very sick” pre­ma­ture ba­bies were safe­ly trans­ferred from Gaza’s main hos­pi­tal to an­oth­er in the south on Sun­day, and will be moved to Egypt on Mon­day, health of­fi­cials said, as scores of oth­er crit­i­cal­ly wound­ed pa­tients re­mained strand­ed there days af­ter Is­raeli forces en­tered the com­pound.

The fate of the new­borns at Shi­fa Hos­pi­tal had cap­tured glob­al at­ten­tion af­ter the re­lease of im­ages show­ing doc­tors try­ing to keep them warm. A pow­er black­out had shut down in­cu­ba­tors and oth­er equip­ment, and food, wa­ter and med­ical sup­plies ran out as Is­raeli forces bat­tled Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants out­side the hos­pi­tal.

World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion chief Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus said on so­cial me­dia that the “very sick” ba­bies were evac­u­at­ed along with six health work­ers and 10 staff fam­i­ly mem­bers. They were tak­en in am­bu­lances of the Pales­tin­ian Red Cres­cent to a hos­pi­tal in the south­ern Gaza city of Rafah, where they were re­ceiv­ing ur­gent care.

The ba­bies suf­fered from de­hy­dra­tion, vom­it­ing, hy­pother­mia and some had sep­sis be­cause they didn’t re­ceive any med­ica­tion, and they had not been in “suit­able con­di­tions for them to stay alive,” said Mo­hamed Za­qout, di­rec­tor of Gaza hos­pi­tals. They’ll go to Egypt for more spe­cial­ized care, he said.

A WHO team that vis­it­ed the hos­pi­tal on Sat­ur­day said 291 pa­tients were still there, in­clud­ing the ba­bies, trau­ma pa­tients with se­vere­ly in­fect­ed wounds, and oth­ers with spinal in­juries who are un­able to move. Four ba­bies died in the two days be­fore their vis­it, ac­cord­ing to Za­qout.

About 2,500 dis­placed peo­ple, mo­bile pa­tients and med­ical staff left Shi­fa Hos­pi­tal on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, the WHO said. It said 25 med­ical staff re­mained, along with the pa­tients.

“Pa­tients and health staff with whom they spoke were ter­ri­fied for their safe­ty and health, and plead­ed for evac­u­a­tion,” the agency said, de­scrib­ing Shi­fa as a death zone.

Is­rael has long al­leged that Hamas main­tains a sprawl­ing com­mand post in­side and un­der Shi­fa, part of its wider ac­cu­sa­tion that the fight­ers use civil­ians as cov­er. It has por­trayed the hos­pi­tal as a key tar­get in its war to end Hamas’ rule in Gaza fol­low­ing the mil­i­tant group’s wide-rang­ing at­tack in­to south­ern Is­rael six weeks ago, which killed over 1,200 peo­ple and trig­gered the war.

Hamas and hos­pi­tal staff de­ny the al­le­ga­tions, and crit­ics have held up the hos­pi­tal as a sym­bol of what they say is Is­rael’s reck­less en­dan­ger­ment of civil­ians. Thou­sands have been killed in Is­raeli strikes, and there are se­vere short­ages of food, wa­ter, med­i­cine and fu­el in the be­sieged ter­ri­to­ry.

Is­raeli troops who have been based at the hos­pi­tal and search­ing its grounds for days say they have found guns and oth­er weapons, and showed re­porters the en­trance to a tun­nel shaft. The As­so­ci­at­ed Press couldn’t in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy Is­rael’s find­ings.

Is­rael’s mil­i­tary said its forces had found about 35 tun­nel shafts and a large num­ber of weapons dur­ing op­er­a­tions in the Sheikh Ijlin and Ri­mal ar­eas of Gaza.

SHIP SEIZED

Is­rael’s mil­i­tary said Yemen-based Houthi rebels had seized a car­go ship in the south­ern Red Sea en route from Turkey to In­dia but said no Is­raelis were on board and that it wasn’t an Is­raeli ship. A state­ment from Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu’s of­fice de­scribed the ship as owned by a British com­pa­ny.

There was no im­me­di­ate com­ment from the Houthis. Ear­li­er in the day, the Iran­ian-backed group threat­ened to tar­get Is­rael-linked ves­sels in the Red Sea.

A U.N. ship data­base iden­ti­fied the ves­sel’s own­ers as a Tel Aviv-based firm, Ray Ship­ping Ltd. Calls to Ray Ship­ping rang unan­swered Sun­day, and of­fi­cials at the com­pa­ny did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a writ­ten re­quest for com­ment.

HEAVY FIGHT­ING IN THE NORTH

Heavy clash­es were re­port­ed in the built-up Ja­baliya refugee camp in north­ern Gaza overnight in­to Sun­day. “There was the con­stant sound of gun­fire and tank shelling,” Yassin Sharif, who is shel­ter­ing in a U.N.-run hos­pi­tal in the camp, said by phone. “It was an­oth­er night of hor­ror.”

The com­mis­sion­er-gen­er­al of the U.N. agency for Pales­tin­ian refugees, Philippe Laz­zari­ni, said 24 peo­ple were killed in what wit­ness­es de­scribed as an Is­raeli airstrike on a school in a crowd­ed U.N. shel­ter in Ja­baliya the day be­fore. The Is­raeli mil­i­tary, which has re­peat­ed­ly called on Pales­tini­ans to leave north­ern Gaza, said on­ly that its troops were ac­tive in the area “with the aim of hit­ting ter­ror­ists.”

More than 11,500 Pales­tini­ans have been killed, ac­cord­ing to Pales­tin­ian health au­thor­i­ties. A fur­ther 2,700 have been re­port­ed miss­ing, be­lieved buried un­der rub­ble. The count does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants; Is­rael says it has killed thou­sands of mil­i­tants.

HOSTAGES FOR AID

Around 1,200 peo­ple have been killed on the Is­raeli side, main­ly civil­ians killed dur­ing Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack, in which the group dragged some 240 cap­tives back in­to Gaza and shat­tered Is­rael’s sense of se­cu­ri­ty. The mil­i­tary says 52 Is­raeli sol­diers have been killed.

Hamas has re­leased four hostages, Is­rael has res­cued one, and the bod­ies of two hostages were found near Shi­fa where there had been heavy fight­ing.

Is­rael, the Unit­ed States and the Per­sian Gulf na­tion of Qatar, which me­di­ates with Hamas, have been ne­go­ti­at­ing over a hostage re­lease for weeks. On Sat­ur­day, a se­nior White House of­fi­cial sug­gest­ed it would need to be com­plet­ed be­fore the en­try of large amounts of des­per­ate­ly need­ed aid.

“A re­lease of a large num­ber of hostages would re­sult in a sig­nif­i­cant pause in fight­ing … and a mas­sive surge of hu­man­i­tar­i­an re­lief,” Brett McGurk, the White House’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil co­or­di­na­tor for the Mid­dle East, said at a con­fer­ence in Bahrain.

Qatar’s prime min­is­ter, Sheikh Mo­hammed bin Ab­dul­rah­man Al Thani, said Sun­day he was “con­fi­dent” a deal would soon be reached, telling re­porters that the “the stick­ing points, hon­est­ly, at this stage are more prac­ti­cal, lo­gis­ti­cal.”

WIN­TER AR­RIV­ING

More than two-thirds of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion of 2.3 mil­lion have fled their homes. The U.N. agency for Pales­tin­ian refugees, or UN­R­WA, is strug­gling to pro­vide ba­sic ser­vices to hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple shel­ter­ing in and around schools and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties. Sev­en­teen of its fa­cil­i­ties have been di­rect­ly hit and 176 peo­ple re­port­ed­ly killed, the agency said.

Their mis­ery has wors­ened in re­cent days with the ar­rival of win­ter, as cold winds and dri­ving rain buf­fet tent camps.

Over the week­end, Is­rael al­lowed UN­R­WA to im­port enough fu­el to con­tin­ue hu­man­i­tar­i­an op­er­a­tions for an­oth­er cou­ple of days, and to keep in­ter­net and tele­phone sys­tems run­ning. Is­rael cut off all fu­el im­ports at the start of the war, caus­ing Gaza’s sole pow­er plant and most wa­ter treat­ment sys­tems to shut down, leav­ing most res­i­dents with­out elec­tric­i­ty or run­ning wa­ter.

De­fense Min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant said Sat­ur­day that “with every pass­ing day, there are few­er places where Hamas ter­ror­ists can op­er­ate,” adding that the mil­i­tants would learn that in south­ern Gaza “in the com­ing days.”

His com­ments were the clear­est in­di­ca­tion yet that the mil­i­tary plans to ex­pand its of­fen­sive to south­ern Gaza, where Is­rael has told Pales­tin­ian civil­ians to seek refuge. Is­rael has re­peat­ed­ly struck what it says are mil­i­tant tar­gets across the south, of­ten killing civil­ians.

The evac­u­a­tion zone is al­ready crammed with dis­placed civil­ians, and it was not clear where they would go if the of­fen­sive moved clos­er. Egypt has re­fused to ac­cept any in­flux of Pales­tin­ian refugees, in part be­cause of fears that Is­rael would not al­low them to re­turn. —KHAN YOU­NIS, Gaza Strip (AP)

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Sto­ry by NA­JIB JOBAIN AND SAMY MAGDY | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Samy Magdy re­port­ed from Cairo.