Hamas claimed Monday that the Israeli army had launched an attack. a deadly strike on a besieged hospital from the north of the Gaza Strip, where soldiers have extended their offensive against the Palestinian Islamist movement which accuses Israel of waging war against hospitals. In the south, 29 premature babies evacuated the day before from the al-Chifa hospital, stormed on November 15 by the Israeli army, arrived in Egypt on Monday via the Rafah border post, according to Egyptian media. /p> A total of 31 babies were released from the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, located in the north, described by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a “death zone” and where eight infants died before their transfer, according to a Palestinian official. The al-Chifa hospital, which according to Israel housed a Hamas hideout in the heart of Gaza City, is deprived of electricity and the shortage of fuel in the besieged Palestinian territory is preventing incubators from operating. < p>In the north of the territory, where most of the Israeli offensive is concentrated, a strike killed at least “12 patients and their relatives” and left “dozens injured” in the Indonesian hospital, located on the edge of the large Palestinian refugee camp in Jabaliya, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health. The Islamist movement continues to repeat that Israel is waging “a war against hospitals” in Gaza. Israel, for its part, accuses Hamas, in power in the territory, of using hospitals for military purposes and of using the civilians there as “human shields”, which the Palestinian movement denies it. In Israel, 1,200 people, the vast majority civilians, were killed, according to the authorities, in the attack launched on October 7 by Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip, on an unprecedented scale and violence. seen in the country's history. According to the army, 65 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. Palestinians in the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli bombings in Rafah, November 20, 2023 in the south of the Gaza Strip © AFP – Mahmud HAMS In retaliation for the attack which traumatized the country, Israel has sworn to “annihilate” Hamas and is relentlessly shelling the Palestinian territory, where its army has been carrying out a ground offensive since October 27. But the scale of the destruction and the toll of victims arouse the disapproval of part of the international community. – Truce for liberation? – In the Gaza Strip, 13,000 people were killed in Israeli bombings, including more than 5,500 children, according to the Hamas health ministry. The Israeli army estimates that around 240 people were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 and taken to Gaza. Qatar, which is mediating to try to obtain their release in exchange for a truce, said on Sunday that only “very minor” obstacles remained to an agreement, without providing a timetable. US President Joe Biden's deputy national security adviser, Jon Finer, told NBC that the agreement was “closer than ever” and included the release of “several dozen” of hostages against a “prolonged period of pause, several days” in the fighting. These advances have not been confirmed by Hamas or by Israel, where the government has so far refused any ceasefire without the release of the hostages. Relatives of those kidnapped will meet the entire war cabinet on Monday evening. Image taken from security camera videos, broadcast by the Israeli army on November 19, 2023, showing, according to it, Hamas fighters taking hostages to Al-Shifa hospital on November 7 © Israeli Army – – – A hospital under siege – Israel announced Monday “expanding its operations in new neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip”, notably in the Jabaliya sector. In the center of the Gaza City, artillery fire and airstrikes destroyed many homes. Doctors at Ahli Arab hospital told AFP they had received “dozens of victims, dead and injured”, arriving from various localities in the north of the territory. 
“The Israeli army is besieging the Indonesian hospital”, where there are “around 700 patients and caregivers”, said Hamas Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidreh on Monday, saying he feared “that it would “the same thing happens there as in al-Chifa.”
The army continues to search every corner of this immense complex and says it has discovered a tunnel 55 meters long and dug to 10 meters depth chamber containing “grenade launchers, explosives and Kalashnikovs”.
image taken from a video broadcast by the Israeli army, on November 17, 2023, showing the entrance to a tunnel under the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza © Israeli army – –
Around 2,300 people according to the UN, patients, staff and civilians seeking to protect themselves were stranded for days in this hospital surrounded by fighting, deprived of water and electricity, before most of them were evacuated on Saturday. between them.
According to the World Health Organization, whose experts visited al-Chifa, on Sunday it still housed 20 caregivers and more than 250 patients unable to move without medical assistance.
– Strikes in the south –
A Palestinian caregiver cares for premature babies at al-Chifa hospital, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 19, 2023 A Palestinian caregiver cares for premature babies at al-Chifa hospital, in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, November 19, 2023 2023 © AFP – Mohammed ABED
The UN has called several times for the emergency delivery of fuel, in particular to power the necessary generators to the operation of hospitals.
At the request of the United States, Israel agreed on Friday to allow fuel into the territory, where around 120,000 liters arrived on Saturday, according to the UN which considers these deliveries insufficient.
Around 1.6 million of the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, according to the UN, have been displaced by the war in this overpopulated territory of 362 square kilometers, subject since October 9 to a “complete siege” by Israel , which blocks deliveries of food, water, electricity and medicine.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are crowded together in very precarious conditions in the south, which is not spared from the bombings either.
On Monday, a first field hospital from Jordan arrived in the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian officials, to be installed in Khan Younes, a large city in the south.
Residents of the neighboring town of Rafah searched through the rubble of their devastated neighborhood on Monday after a bombing of an inhabited building, according to AFP images. Some collected some clothes while others transported the remains of the victims, wrapped in white sheets, in a truck to bury them.
“We were sleeping at home and we came to see what had happened after hearing a loud boom. We found buildings reduced to ruins,” testified a resident of the neighborhood, Shehda Mosallem.
Fighting in Gaza © AFP – Sophie RAMIS, Maxence D'AVERSA, Olivia BUGAULT
Sunday evening, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) indicated that 122 patients had arrived in “a few minutes” at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younès, after an Israeli strike about a kilometer from this complex where the NGO is deployed.
“A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Gaza,” declared the head of Chinese diplomacy Wang Yi, who on Monday welcomed the foreign ministers of the Palestinian Authority, Indonesia, 'Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
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