Palestinians call for evacuating Gaza's largest hospital as Israel and Hamas battle just outside

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinian authorities on Tuesday called for a cease-fire to evacuate three dozen newborns and other patients trapped inside Gaza's biggest hospital as Israeli forces battle Hamas in the streets just outside and seize more ground across northern Gaza.

For days, the Israeli army has encircled Shifa Hospital, determined to seize the facility it says Hamas hides in, and beneath, to use civilians as shields for its main command base.

Hospital staff and Hamas deny the claim. Meanwhile, hundreds of patients, staff and displaced people were trapped inside, with supplies dwindling and no electricity to run incubators and other life-saving equipment. With refrigeration out for days, morgue staff on Tuesday dug a mass grave in the yard for more than 120 bodies, officials said.

The standoff at Shifa and other hospitals comes as Israeli forces control larger swaths of Gaza City and the surrounding northern part of the Gaza Strip, saying they are driving out and killing Hamas fighters.

Israel has vowed to crush Hamas rule in Gaza after the militants' October 7 attack into Israel in which they killed some 1,200 people and took roughly 240 hostages. But even as its troops control more of a devastated north Gaza, the Israeli government has acknowledged it doesn't know what it will do with the territory after Hamas' defeat.

The onslaught – one of the most intense bombardments so far this century -- has been disastrous for Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians.

More than 11,200 people, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah. About 2,700 people have been reported missing. The ministry's count does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths.

Almost the entire population of Gaza has squeezed into the southern two-thirds of the tiny territory, where conditions have been deteriorating even as bombardment there continues. About 200,000 fled the north in recent days, the UN said Tuesday, but tens of thousands are believed to remain.

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