Health officials and people trapped inside Gaza's largest hospital rejected Israel's claims that it was helping babies and others evacuate Sunday, saying fighting continued just outside the facility where incubators lay idle with no electricity and critical supplies were running out.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed urgent calls for a cease-fire unless it includes the release of all the nearly 240 hostages captured by Hamas in the Oct. 7 rampage that triggered the war.
A day after Netanyahu said Israel was bringing its "full force" with the aim of ending Hamas' 16-year rule in Gaza, residents reported heavy airstrikes and shelling, including around Shifa Hospital, where there is a concealed Hamas command post inside and under the compound.
Video: Israeli military says it will help evacuate babies from Gaza hospital // Reuters
"They are outside, not far from the gates," said Ahmed al-Boursh, a resident sheltering there.
The IDF said it placed 300 liters (79 gallons) of fuel near Shifa overnight for an emergency generator powering incubators for premature babies and coordinated the delivery with hospital officials. But the military said Hamas prevented the hospital from receiving the fuel.
Speaking to CNN, Netanyahu asserted that "100 or so" people had been evacuated from Shifa and that Israel had created safe corridors.
Video: IDF delivers fuel to Shifa hospital / X/@idf
The military said troops would assist in moving babies on Sunday. But Medical Aid for Palestinians, a UK-based charity that has supported Shifa's neonatal intensive care unit, said transferring critically ill infants is complex. "With ambulances unable to reach the hospital ... and no hospital with capacity to receive them, there is no indication of how this can be done safely," CEO Melanie Ward said.
The Gazan Health Ministry said there are 1,500 patients at Shifa, along with 1,500 medical personnel and between 15,000 and 20,000 people seeking shelter.
The president of Doctors Without Borders International, Christos Christou, told CBS' "Face the Nation" it would take weeks to evacuate the patients.
The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said another Gaza City hospital, Al-Quds, is "no longer operational" because it was out of fuel with 6,000 people trapped there. Gaza's sole power plant shut down a month ago, and Israel has barred fuel imports to prevent Hamas from using them.
Netanyahu has said the responsibility for any harm to civilians lies with Hamas. Israel has long accused the group, which operates in dense residential neighborhoods, of using civilians as human shields.
The US has pushed for temporary pauses that would allow for wider distribution of badly needed aid to civilians in the territory, where conditions are increasingly dire.
But Israel has only agreed to brief daily periods during which civilians can flee ground combat in northern Gaza and head south on foot along two main roads. Israel continues to strike terrorist targets across southern Gaza, often killing women and children.
Netanyahu has begun to outline Israel's postwar plans for Gaza, which contrast sharply with the vision of the United States.
He said Gaza would be demilitarized and Israel would retain the ability to enter Gaza freely to hunt down terrorists. He rejected the idea that the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would at some stage control Gaza.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the US opposes an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and envisions a unified Palestinian government in Gaza and the West Bank as a step toward a Palestinian state, long opposed by Netanyahu's government.
The war threatens to trigger a wider conflict, with Israel and Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon trading fire along the border. Attacks by Hezbollah on Sunday wounded seven Israeli troops and 10 others, Israel's military and rescue services said.
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