LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
- Two Palestinians were killed overnight in Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank.
- 31 babies have been evacuated from Shifa Hospital
- Israeli airstrikes kill scores at a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza.
- President Biden said Saturday the Palestinian Authority should ultimately govern the Gaza Strip and the West Bank following the Israel-Hamas war.
- Israel is widening its war against Hamas in southern Gaza.
- Israel denies reports that it ordered the evacuation of Shifa Hospital.
- Palestinian telecommunications company partially restores phone and internet services in Gaza after fuel shipments arrive.
At least 31 very sick, premature babies have been evacuated from Gaza’s Shifa Hospital and transported to a hospital in Egypt, the World Health Organization said Sunday.
Israeli forces had raided the hospital last week as part of their military operations against Hamas militants. A World Health Organization team toured Shifa Saturday for an hour and said what was "once the largest, most advanced, and best equipped hospital in Gaza" was now a "death zone."
Israel’s military has been searching Shifa Hospital for what it believes is a Hamas command center that it alleges was located under the building — a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.
Meanwhile, two Palestinians were killed overnight in Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank.
On the diplomatic front, Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., told ABC’s “This Week” show that Israel is “hopeful we can get a significant number of hostages [held by Hamas] freed in the next few days,” with an accompanying short pause in the fighting, possibly lasting five days.
U.S. news reports say about 50 hostages, particularly women and children, of the estimated 240 held by Hamas could be returned to Israel, but it is unclear whether and how many Palestinian prisoners held by Israel might be released.
Herzog refused to call any cessation in fighting a cease-fire, signaling that Israel plans to resume its attack on Hamas targets after the pause ends.
White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that the U.S. believes it is “closer than we have been perhaps at any point since these negotiations [over the hostage release] began weeks ago.” He said, “There are areas of difference and disagreement that have been narrowed, if not closed out entirely,” while adding that no deal has been reached.
“One of the challenges associated with this is we’re not on the ground in Gaza, the United States,” Finer said. “We are not in direct contact with Hamas. We do that only through intermediaries. And so, we don’t have perfect fidelity about exact numbers of hostages, including numbers who are still alive.”
Dozens of displaced Palestinian civilians were killed or wounded Saturday in Israeli airstrikes, including one on a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees reported.
"The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help," wounded survivor Ahmed Radwan told The Associated Press by phone of Israel’s attack on the camp’s Fakhoura school. Photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.
"These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian cease-fire cannot wait any longer," UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini posted Saturday on the social media platform X.
In response, the Israeli military said only that its troops were active in the Jabaliya area "with the aim of hitting terrorists" while trying to minimize civilian harm.
On Saturday, the military warned civilians in parts of southern Gaza to leave. On Friday, Israel had issued new warnings for Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis to relocate from areas of the Gaza Strip where Israeli officials earlier had told people it was safe.
"We're asking people to relocate," Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC. "I know it's not easy for many of them, but we don't want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire."
Palestinian authorities in Gaza now say more than 12,000 people — about 5,000 of them children — have been killed since Israel launched a major air and ground offensive in response to the October 7 Hamas terror attack that killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Britain, the European Union and others.
The United Nations deems the death toll figures as credible, though they have not been updated since November 10 because of the collapse of services and communications at hospitals in northern Gaza.
Israel said 57 of its soldiers had been killed in Gaza since it entered the territory.
On Saturday, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 47 people in Khan Younis and the vicinity, medics said.
One airstrike hit two apartment buildings in Khan Younis, killing 26 Palestinians and wounding 23, health officials said. Six more were killed a few kilometers north when a house in the town of Deir Al-Balah was bombed, health officials said.
Internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip on Saturday, ending a telecommunications outage that had forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.
VOA United Nations correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some information for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
