Ambulances began the evacuation of 28 premature babies out of Gaza on Monday morning so they can receive medical treatment in Egypt.
The babies were being transported to the Rafah crossing and will be treated in Egyptian hospitals once over the border, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. The evacuation came after the World Health Organisation said the infants were threatened by the prospect of serious infection, with 11 in critical condition.
They were previously in the al-Shifa hospital in the northern Gaza Strip before being moved to another hospital in southern Gaza. The moving of the babies is a joint effort between the Palestinian Red Crescent, the WHO and UN office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs.
Four other babies were said to have died in the two days before the evacuation, which came after al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City was overrun by Israeli troops last Wednesday.
Hamas-run authorities on Monday said that 12 people were killed in an Israeli strike on another clinic, the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, where thousands of people were sheltering.
Following international criticism over the military operation at al-Shifa, Israel’s military showed video evidence purporting to prove that Hamas had built tunnels underneath the sprawling 20-acre site. Israeli officials also released security camera video showing what the military said were two foreign hostages, one Thai and one Nepalese, who were captured by Hamas and taken into al-Shifa.
The army said that an investigation had found that Israeli Corporal Noa Marciano, who was also taken captive, was wounded in an Israeli strike that killed her captor but was then killed by a Hamas militant in the hospital.
Officials from Qatar and the US raised expectations that a number of the captives could soon be released. Hamas has already released four hostages and Israel has rescued one.
Qatar has been negotiating with Hamas for a much more significant release, and thousands of the hostages’ relatives kept up public pressure on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu by marching from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before holding a demonstration outside his residence. About 1,200 people were killed in Israel on the day of the surprise Hamas assault. Gaza’s Hamas-run government says more than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed, nearly half of them children, since then.
“This war is having a staggering and unacceptable number of civilian casualties... this must stop,” United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres said after an alleged Israeli strike on one UN-run school in Jabaliya left 24 people dead on Saturday.
But Mr Netanyahu has vowed no end to the fighting until the hostages are liberated and Hamas is eradicated.
