GAZA STRIP – Israeli forces raided the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital on Wednesday, targeting what they said was a Hamas command center in tunnels among thousands of patients and civilians seeking refuge from intense fighting.

The operation at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City has fueled growing concerns for weeks about the people trapped there in squalid conditions and represents a key target in Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas.

Dozens of Israeli soldiers, some wearing face masks and firing in the air, urged young men to surrender, a journalist in touch with AFP reported, as the army said it had a “precise and targeted” operation at the facility carried out.

Youssef Abu Rish, an official with the Hamas-run health ministry who was at the hospital, told AFP he could see tanks inside the complex.

The Israeli army described it as “a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specific area” of the facility. The Palestinian militants have repeatedly denied hiding a base at the hospital.

The Red Cross and the World Health Organization called for the protection of civilians at the facility, echoing warnings from Israel’s main ally, Washington.

Israel said the raid was carried out on the basis of an “operational necessity,” but the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority condemned it as a “flagrant violation of international law.”

The United Nations estimates that at least 2,300 people – patients, staff and displaced civilians – are inside and may not be able to escape due to the intense fighting.

Witnesses have described conditions at the hospital as horrific: medical procedures took place without anesthesia, families lived in the hallways with little food or water, and the stench of rotting corpses filled the air.

The army said it delivered incubators, baby food and medical supplies to the hospital during the operation.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to its Oct. 7 attacks that killed an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and brought 240 hostages to Gaza.

According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, Israel’s subsequent airstrikes and ground offensive killed 11,320 people, mostly civilians, including thousands of children.

FEAR FOR CIVILIANS

International concern about the fate of those in the hospital is growing, particularly as the number of civilians in Gaza has increased during the war.

“The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff and all civilians must take precedence over all other concerns,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on X, formerly Twitter. “Hospitals are not battlefields.”

The White House reiterated its concern for the safety of civilians shortly after the raid began.

“We do not support an airstrike on a hospital and do not want to see a firefight in a hospital,” a National Security Council spokesman said.

Previously, the White House said U.S. intelligence sources had confirmed Israel’s claim that Hamas and another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, had buried an operational “command and control node” under al-Shifa.

Hamas, which has repeatedly denied the claims, said US President Joe Biden was “fully responsible” for the attack and accused his government of giving Israel a “green light… for further massacres of civilians”.

Citing the Hamas-run health ministry, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said 40 patients died in Al-Shifa on Tuesday, while hospital director Abu Salmiya said 179 bodies were buried in a mass grave inside the complex.

“We could see flames”

The situation in the other hospitals in the Gaza Strip is also dramatic: According to the World Health Organization, 22 of 36 are not functioning due to a lack of generator fuel, damage or fighting.

Patients, wounded people, their families and medical teams trapped at Al-Quds Hospital were evacuated on Tuesday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, adding that the facility had been “under siege” for 10 days.

The head of the U.N. Children’s Fund on Wednesday described the “devastating” scenes she saw during a visit to Gaza and called on parties to the conflict to “stop this horror.”

The humanitarian crisis is also affecting 1.5 million people who, according to the United Nations, have fled south after Israel urged them to leave the northern half of the territory.

Even though residents of the Gaza Strip were urged to flee south, attacks there continued to claim lives and destroy homes

“Suddenly all we could see was flames. We were all buried under the rubble, no one could see anyone else,” said Ali Abu Jazar, who survived an attack in Rafah, in Gaza’s far south.

“We started shouting to let them know that we are here, among you, so they started clearing the rubble to save us,” he added.

During the five weeks of war, a small proportion of relief supplies reached the besieged area and, above all, fuel for the generators was in short supply.

As the state-affiliated news agency Al Qahera News reported, a tanker truck arrived from Egypt to Gaza via the Rafah border crossing on Wednesday, the first such delivery since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.

An Egyptian source said the fuel was being delivered to the United Nations “to facilitate the delivery of aid after trucks on the Palestinian side stopped operating due to a lack of fuel.”

Hostage talks

The Israeli leadership has so far rejected calls for a ceasefire in the five-week war until the hostages are released.

Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, said on Monday that Israel had demanded the release of 100 hostages, while the militants demanded the release of 200 Palestinian children and 75 women from Israeli prisons.

Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed bin Mohammed Al-Ansari, who is overseeing hostage-taking deal talks, said the “deteriorating” situation in Gaza was complicating efforts to reach a deal.

As pressure mounted on the Israeli government, Netanyahu said he was working “tirelessly” to get the hostages out.

Relatives of the hostages set out on a five-day protest march from Tel Aviv to the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem on Tuesday to demand the prisoners’ release, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.

The group later called on the government to “agree to a deal tonight to bring all hostages home from Gaza.”