Gaza hospital ‘surrounded by tanks’

(CNN) — Israeli tanks have surrounded a Gaza hospital, its director told CNN, as strikes reportedly hit the vicinity of other healthcare facilities in the Strip, heightening fears Friday that Israel’s military campaign is further endangering patients and medical staff in the besieged territory.

Mustafa al-Kahlout, who heads the Al Nasr hospital and Al Rantisi Pediatric hospital in northern Gaza, told CNN that they were surrounded and asked for the Red Cross to assist with an evacuation. “We are completely surrounded, there are tanks outside the hospital, and we cannot leave,” al-Kahlout said.

The hospital complex is close to Sheikh Radwan neighborhood and Al Shati camp, where ground fighting was reported by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas separately. “We do not have electricity, no oxygen for the patients, we do not have medicine and water,” al-Kahlout said. “We do not know our fate.”

His call comes after strikes were reported near at least two other hospitals in northern Gaza.

In a Facebook statement, Al Awda hospital said that due to the “targeting (of) the vicinity of Al Awda Hospital… and the vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital” by Israeli forces, 10 of its employees were injured, infrastructure was hit and nine vehicles were impacted.

This included “two ambulances that were completely damaged,” the hospital statement said.

In a separate statement, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said one of their volunteers had been injured and two ambulances rendered unusable by a strike near Al Awda hospital. The group also shared images and a video of two ambulances with their windscreens shattered in what appears to be the hospital parking lot. It was not immediately clear if PRCS was referring to the same ambulances mentioned in the hospital’s statement.

The IDF has not commented on the incidents but has repeatedly called on civilians to move south of Wadi Gaza, a waterway bisecting the center of the Strip, as it intensifies its assault on Gaza City and the north of the territory. The IDF has said Hamas is embedding itself in civilian infrastructure and that it will strike Hamas “wherever necessary.”

‘Coming under bombardment’

Several social media videos have meanwhile showed people injured in what was described as the outpatient clinic of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

It is unclear what struck the hospital, but the videos show injured people lying on the ground of the outdoor clinic. Witnesses in the videos are saying it was strikes on the area. CNN could not verify it was strikes and has reached out to the IDF.

A World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson said Friday that al-Shifa was “coming under bombardment,” adding that 20 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were “out of action.”

Asked about a potential Israeli airstrike on al-Shifa hospital on Friday, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said in a briefing: “I haven’t got the detail on al-Shifa but we do know they are coming under bombardment.”

Israel began its offensive inside Gaza, following the October 7 Hamas attacks that killed 1,400 people in Israel. The Israeli military has since stepped up its campaign on northern Gaza in recent days, effectively cutting the territory in two, with its ground operations and fiercest aerial bombardment apparently concentrated in the north.

But the impact on healthcare facilities has raised concerns about the dire humanitarian situation for those remaining in northern Gaza. The majority of hospitals in Gaza – 18 out of 35 – have stopped functioning, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, which draws figures from the Hamas-controlled territory, said on Thursday.

In addition, 71% of all primary-care facilities have shut down due to damage or lack of fuel, the ministry said. Its statement said that the hospitals that remain open are limited in what they can provide and are shutting gradually down wards.

Volker Türk, the top United Nations human rights official, on Friday meanwhile raised doubts over Israel’s unilateral establishment of “safe zones” in Gaza, saying that nowhere within the territory was safe for civilians.

The offensive has so far killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah. Streams of Palestinians – including women, children and the elderly – are making their way south in a growing exodus along daily evacuation corridors announced by the Israeli military.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said that “far too many Palestinians have been killed, far too many have suffered these past weeks” – one of his most direct condemnations of the civilian toll that the Israeli offensive has taken in Gaza.

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