The latest:
- WHO team tours Al-Shifa Hospital and describes it as a “death zone.”
- Israel says its soldiers have found a fortified tunnel under Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital.
- Qatar says challenges to Israel-Hamas hostage deal are “just logistical.”
Thirty-one premature babies were safely transferred from Gaza’s main hospital to another in the south on Sunday and will be moved to Egypt, 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 Al-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 (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media that the “very sick” babies were evacuated, along with six health workers and some family members. He said they were taken to a hospital in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where they are receiving urgent care.
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. Reports said on Saturday there were only 125 patients, but there has been chaos surrounding the area during a mass exodus from the hospital.
WHO said on Sunday that it was able to tour the hospital for an hour after about 2,500 displaced people, mobile patients and medical staff left the sprawling compound. The agency described it as a “death zone,” with signs of gunfire and shelling and a mass grave at the entrance.
A teenager who said he was injured in a bombing near his home was among those who left the hospital on Saturday. Majed Baheeth said there is no food or water to drink at Al-Shifa.
“People are dead and nobody buries them. [There’s] no food and drink, nothing. There are no doctors, nothing; the doctors ran away. There are some nurses, God bless them, who provide us with treatment and leave. There is no food, no drink and shooting 24 hours. It doesn’t stop,” he said.
Health sector ‘destroyed, undermined’
WHO said it was hoping to the evacuate patients to southern Gaza, where hospitals are also overwhelmed.
“The Gaza health sector is totally destroyed, undermined,” Marwan Jilani, director general of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, told CBC’s Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday.
Israel has long alleged that Hamas maintains a sprawling command post inside and under Al-Shifa. Hamas and hospital staff deny the allegations. 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 last week.
IDF says it uncovered tunnel with blast-proof door
On Sunday, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) published video on social media of what it described as a tunnel dug by Palestinian militants under the hospital.
While acknowledging that it has a network of hundreds of kilometres of secret tunnels, bunkers and access shafts throughout the Palestinian enclave, Hamas has denied that these are located in civilian infrastructure like hospitals.
In an update on operations in Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the Israeli military said its engineers had uncovered a tunnel 10 metres deep and running 55 metres to a blast-proof door.
“This type of door is used by the Hamas terrorist organization to block Israeli forces from entering the command centres and the underground assets belonging to Hamas,” said a military statement accompanied by video showing a narrow passage with arched concrete roofing, ending at a grey door.
The statement did not say what was beyond the door. The tunnel had been accessed through a shaft discovered in a shed within the Al-Shifa compound that contained munitions, it said.
CBC News hasn’t been able to independently verify the IDF’s findings.
Potential deal being brokered
The Washington Post reported late on Saturday that Israel, the United States and Hamas have reached a tentative agreement to free dozens of Israeli women and children held hostage in Gaza in exchange for a five-day pause in fighting, citing people familiar with the deal.
However, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. officials said no deal had been reached yet.
Featured VideoRosemary Barton speaks with Israel’s ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed, about reports of a U.S.-brokered deal with Israel and Hamas, Canada’s relationship with Israel, ceasefire calls, ground operations in Gaza and efforts to free hostages.
The hostage release could begin within the next several days, barring last-minute hitches in the Qatari-mediated negotiations, according to people familiar with the detailed six-page agreement, the newspaper said on Saturday.
Israel is hopeful that a “significant number” of hostages could be released by Hamas “in coming days,” Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview on ABC’s This Week on Sunday.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said on Sunday his confidence is growing that a hostage deal would be reached. At a joint news conference after talks in Doha with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, he said that the remaining challenges were “very minor” and “logistical.”
News of a possible deal comes after Israel’s government vowed to destroy Hamas following the militant group’s Oct. 7 surprise attack on southern Israel.
Nearly 240 people — from babies to grandparents, and even foreign nationals — are believed to be in the Gaza Strip after being taken hostage by Palestinian militants during assaults on Israeli villages and army bases. Israel says Hamas and other armed factions from Gaza killed 1,200 Israelis in the attacks.
As the conflict entered its seventh week, authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip raised their death toll to 12,300 — including 5,000 children.
Rafah crossing open again
Meanwhile, a new batch of people with ties to Canada desperate to flee escalating violence in the Gaza Strip has been approved to leave the besieged territory as of Sunday.
Featured Video‘Still now I can’t talk with them, I can’t call them, I am worried about them, they are not safe,’ said Sabreen Fuad, whose family members remain in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war because they only have Palestinian documentation. Fuad, who is Canadian, and her four children were able to cross into Egypt and are scheduled to fly to Canada on Nov. 21.
The names of 135 Canadians are now on a list of foreign passport holders cleared to cross into Egypt via the Rafah land crossing. That list is updated daily by Gaza’s General Authority for Crossings and Borders.
A notice shared on the authority’s Facebook page tells those cleared for travel to arrive at the border by 7 a.m. local time.
The most recent update from Global Affairs Canada, provided on Friday, said 376 Canadians, permanent residents and their relatives have been able to leave the Palestinian territory through the Rafah crossing.
In central Gaza, 31 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Bureij and Nusseirat refugee camps, including two Palestinian journalists, health officials in the territory said.
The officials said a woman and her child were also killed in a strike overnight in Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip.
Israel has signalled that it plans to expand its operations to southern Gaza, where it had told hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge early in the war.
An Israeli offensive in the south could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Gaza City in the north to uproot again, along with residents of Khan Younis — a city of more than 400,000, compounding a dire humanitarian crisis.
The conflict has already displaced around two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.