Just Now / 6:52 AM EST
Premature babies evacuated from Al-Shifa hospital
Dozens of premature babies have been evacuated from Gaza’s main hospital and will be transferred to facilities in Egypt, the territory’s health ministry and the Palestine Red Crescent Society have said.
“Today, PRCS emergency medical services teams, in coordination by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), successfully evacuated 31 premature babies from the Al-Shifa Hospital,” the Red Crescent said in a post on X.
Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the ministry, confirmed the evacuation in a phone call with the Associated Press this morning.
Fears had mounted for the babies’ health after the hospital ran out of fuel, forcing doctors to shut down incubators and take emergency steps to keep them warm. Hundreds of patients and staff who were able to flee left the facility yesterday after it was raided by Israeli forces, but many of the most vulnerable remained.
3m ago / 6:49 AM EST
Doctors Without Borders condemns ‘deliberate’ attack that killed one in convoy
A relative of a Doctors Without Borders [Médecins Sans Frontières] worker was killed and another injured in an attack on a convoy evacuating 137 people from premises near Al-Shifa hospital on Saturday, a statement from the humanitarian organization said.
Two of five of the MSF cars in the convoy were “deliberately” hit, the statement said, as it travelled back towards the MSF offices after being forced to turn away from the final checkpoint in Gaza’s south due to overcrowding, extreme wait times and the sounds of gunfire nearby.
MSF had informed both the Israeli army and Hamas of their evacuation plans prior to the journey, the statement said, and was traveling along the Salah al-Din route marked safe by the IDF. It added that 65 children were in the convoy at the time it was attacked.
29m ago / 6:24 AM EST
Israel says residents of four Gaza neighborhoods must leave by 4 p.m.
The IDF has told residents of Daraj, Tuffah and Shejaiya in Gaza City and Jabalia in the north of the strip that they must evacuate as soon as possible or by 4p.m. (9a.m. ET) today “because you staying there is dangerous.”
In a statement released on X, IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee said that residents should travel south via the Salah Al-Dine road, and that the military would pause fighting between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to facilitate travel.
Jabalia is home to the Jabalia refugee camp, where thousands of people already internally displaced by Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas are living alongside long-term internal refugees. Despite the south of Gaza being designated as the evacuation zone for Gazan civilians, it has also come under heavy bombardment in recent days.
51m ago / 6:02 AM EST
Smoke from airstrikes in Gaza visible from Israel
Images taken from southern Israel show the scope of damage from the air strikes hitting besieged Gaza. Smoke billowed above buildings in the area on Sunday.
56m ago / 5:57 AM EST
Israel says it located Hamas tunnel shafts in Gaza neighborhoods
Israeli soldiers operating in Gaza City found 35 tunnel shafts on Sunday, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in a series of posts on X.
Hagari said that paratroopers, operating alongside armor, engineering and the air force located the tunnels in the southern Sheikh Ijlin and central Rimal neighborhoods.
In a separate statement, the IDF also said that it raided the residences of senior Hamas officials in Rimal, an area of Gaza City which contained “military posts” and “terrorist infrastructure.” Though both statements claimed to have “eliminated” Hamas militants, they did not suggest how many.
NBC News is unable to independently verify these reports. Hamas did not immediately confirm the deaths of combatants.
1h ago / 5:52 AM EST
Negotiators are closing in on a deal to release hostages, sources say
American, Israeli and Hamas negotiators are closing in on a deal to release some hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting, a diplomat with knowledge of the talks and a second source familiar with the negotiations told NBC News.
The sources caution nothing has been finalized yet which means any potential deal could still fall apart.
A senior Israeli official also said that “as the military pressure increases, the chances of a release of hostages grows because Hamas is desperate for a cease-fire.” This official also stressed that no deal has been finalized.
A spokesperson for the National Security Council made a similar statement last night.
“We have not reached a deal yet, but we continue to work hard to get to a deal,” spokesperson Adrienne Waston posted on X in response to a Washington Post report about a possible agreement.
2h ago / 5:10 AM EST
IDF continues operations in north Gaza and at Al-Shifa Hospital
Israel’s military says it Defense Forces is continuing its pursuit of Hamas in northern Gaza.
“Even at this hour, special forces are operating in the shaft that we discovered last night at the Shifa hospital,” said Isarel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. “We will distribute the visual documentation from there, in the near future,” he said.
He did not address reports of attacks that hit cities in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, including in Khan Younis.
The IDF has said that Hamas was operating a command center under the hospital, showing images of weapons and a tunnel to substantiate its claim. NBC News has not been able to independently verify the claim and staff at the hospital have strongly denied it.
1h ago / 5:32 AM EST
32 babies among those left at Al-Shifa
There are 32 babies in “extremely critical condition” and 291 patients left at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, according to a joint statement from the WHO and UN agencies following a visit to the hospital.
Workers at the hospital have previously said that the lack of fuel and electricity prevented them from running incubators for premature babies, who they were forced to put together in ordinary beds, lying side-by-side for body heat and exposed to infection and temperature changes.
Gaza’s health ministry said Friday that the number of babies who have died at the hospital had risen to four.
2h ago / 5:04 AM EST
In the West Bank, Gazan workers wait to return home
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Weeks have passed since Israel sent scores of Palestinian workers back into Gaza, but in the occupied West Bank, many remain — some grief-stricken as they absorb devastating news from back home.
Sitting outside a community center in Ramallah, where dozens of makeshift beds have been set up for Gazan workers, Hassan Al-Dreemli, a 32-year-old construction worker and father of two, told NBC News he found out today that his sister-in-law and young nephew were killed in an air strike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
“They slaughtered us. They killed us,” he said, holding his head in one hand and his phone in the other as he listens to voice notes from loved ones updating him on his brother’s condition. His relatives have told him his brother survived the air strike, but was injured.
Having yet to hear from his sibling himself, he said he’s worried they might be lying to him to protect him from a harder truth.
Al-Dreemli said he worries constantly for his family, including his wife and two young children. He said his son is just two months old and he has yet to meet him in person. But until it is safer to return home, he said, all he can do is wait and hope to have that chance.
2h ago / 4:27 AM EST
Al-Shifa hospital is a ‘death zone,’ says World Health Organization
A joint team of United Nations and World Health Organization workers on an “assessment mission” to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City called the hospital a “death zone” and said the situation is “desperate,” according to a statement released by the WHO Saturday.
The humanitarian team found a mass grave at its entrance, which they were told contained the bodies of 80 people. The hospital, which has been without clean water, fuel, food or medical supplies for the past six weeks, also contained signs of shelling and gunfire, according to the statement.
Some are unable or unwilling to leave Al-Shifa: 291 patients and 25 health workers remain. Damage and lack of key resources at the hospital had caused it to “essentially stop functioning as a medical facility,” the WHO statement said, adding that medical and solid waste piled in the corridors. Many injured patients’ wounds were severely infected due to the absence of sanitation and infection control measures at the hospital, it said.
The statement added that evacuation plans for patients to hospitals in the south are being “urgently developed” by humanitarian organizations, but the ability to carry them out is “pending guarantees of safe passage by parties to the conflict.”
