Israeli tanks surround north Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital

BBC News:

Israeli tanks have reportedly encircled Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital, where the Hamas-run health ministry said 12 people were killed on Sunday night.

The hospital’s director, Dr Marwan Al-Sultan, told the BBC that the post-operative care department was hit and troops were only about 20m (66ft) away.

On Monday evening, he said intermittent shooting could still be heard on site.

The Israeli military said its forces targeted “terrorists” who had opened fire at them from within the hospital.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said he was “appalled”.

“Health workers and civilians should never have to be exposed to such horror, and especially while inside a hospital,” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra accused Israel of “tightening its noose” around the hospital in the north of the enclave, and later told AFP news agency 200 patients had been evacuated by bus to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

He said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was helping to coordinate the evacuation of the remaining 400 patients.

Meanwhile, 28 premature Palestinian babies evacuated on Sunday from Gaza City’s besieged Al-Shifa Hospital, which Israeli forces raided last week, have been transported to Egypt for treatment.

Israel launched a major military campaign in Gaza in response to a cross-border attack by hundreds of Hamas gunmen on 7 October, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and about 240 others taken hostage.

Gaza’s health ministry says at least 13,000 people have been killed in the territory since Israel launched its retaliatory campaign against Hamas.

The UN Security Council has called for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses” for “a sufficient number of days” to allow UN agencies to safely enter the sealed-off territory.

But five days on, the International Rescue Committee says the killing and suffering of Palestinians has increased, and has urged the Security Council and others to bring about a ceasefire “without limits on its duration, to protect lives and allow aid to flow”.