Ground battles rage in Gaza  as concern grows for hospitals

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestine — Ground battles raged inside the northern Gaza Strip on Monday and Israeli tanks were seen on the outskirts of the besieged costal enclave. 

Israel's intensifying land and air campaign since Hamas's October 7 attacks has heightened fears for the 2.4 million civilians trapped inside besieged Gaza.

Gaza's health ministry said Monday that at least 8,306 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since the start of the war with Israel on October 7.

The ministry said at least 3,457 children were among the dead, as Israel continued to pound the Gaza Strip with air and artillery strikes.

Dozens of Israeli tanks rolled into the fringes of Gaza City, eyewitnesses said, after a night of heavy clashes in nearby areas.

Hamas said its Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades were engaged in "heavy fighting" with Israeli troops on Sunday inside northern Gaza, where besieged residents were again told to flee.

Concern has surged about the widening humanitarian disaster, with fears centred on Gaza hospitals inside Israeli-mandated evacuation zones where medics warn that many patients cannot be moved.

Columns of Israeli tanks and armoured bulldozers were seen churning through the sand, and Israeli snipers took positions inside emptied residential buildings, in footage released by the army.

Israeli tanks were later spotted on the edges of Gaza City, usually the most densely populated urban area but now emptied of many residents following repeated Israeli evacuation orders.

A witness told AFP the Israeli tanks blocked the strip’s major north-south road and had been “firing at any vehicle that tries to go along it”.

AFP journalists are not inside Gaza City, following Israeli warnings that the territory’s northern areas must be considered a war zone.

Israel has for weeks warned Palestinians civilians to flee the northern half of the Gaza Strip, while also cutting off normal supplies of water, food, fuel and other essentials to the long-blockaded territory.

The United Nations reported on Sunday that civil order was starting to break down after “thousands of people” had ransacked its warehouses looking for tinned food, flour, oil and hygiene supplies.

According to the UN, all 10 hospitals in northern Gaza have received evacuation orders, despite sheltering thousands of patients and about 117,000 of the displaced.

Among those being treated are intensive care patients, infants and elderly people on life support systems.

The head of the World Health Organisation said calls to evacuate Al Quds hospital in Gaza City were “deeply concerning”.

“We reiterate, it’s impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without endangering their lives,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.

Mohamed Al Talmas, who has taken shelter in Gaza’s biggest hospital Al Shifa, said “the ground shook” there with intense Israeli raids.

‘Collective punishment’ 

UN chief Antonio Guterres has warned the situation was getting “more desperate by the hour” and warned against the “collective punishment” of Palestinians.

The International Criminal Court Lead Prosecutor Karim Khan warned Israel on Sunday that preventing access to humanitarian aid could be a “crime”.

Limited aid has entered Gaza from Egypt under a US-brokered deal, but its volume has fallen far short of the hundreds of trucks a day aid agencies say are needed.

The UN reported that 33 trucks carrying water, food and medical supplies had entered Gaza on Sunday, bringing to 117 the total that have entered through the Rafah crossing since the resumption of aid on October 21.