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Taken together, Israeli military officials said, the videos are strong evidence that Hamas used the hospital area as part of its military operations.
Israeli forces were continuing operations at Al-Shifa, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a military spokesman, said in a statement. Their top priority, he said, was uncovering information about the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Israel and Hamas have been trying to reach a deal to pause the fighting so that hostages can be released. But Jon Finer, President Biden’s deputy national security adviser, warned on Sunday that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” and that the fragile negotiations could fall apart.
The evacuation of the babies from Al-Shifa on Sunday was carried out “under extremely intense and high-risk security conditions,” a day after Israeli forces allowed a U.N. team to tour the hospital for an hour, the W.H.O.’s director general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said.
The babies had been in “rapidly deteriorating” condition following the “total collapse” of medical services at the hospital, but “their condition is now being stabilized,” UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children, said in a statement on Sunday.
Health officials were trying to reunite the infants with their families — but that may be impossible in some cases. Some were born to mothers who were later killed in airstrikes or who died shortly after giving birth, doctors at Al-Shifa have said.
On Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry published a list of the 31 infants and issued a call for relatives to go to the hospital in Rafah to identify them, saying that the parents might be able to join the babies in Egypt.
When the U.N. team visited Al-Shifa on Saturday, 291 patients were there, according to the W.H.O. It said that several patients had died because medical services had been shut down and that heavy fighting continued nearby.
Members of the U.N. team found “evident” signs of shelling and gunfire at the hospital as well as a mass grave at the entrance that they were told contained more than 80 bodies, the W.H.O. said.
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