The latest:
- Four patients and a premature baby at Al-Shifa hospital die as generator runs out of fuel.
- Thousands flee north Gaza after strikes on its largest hospitals.
- Israel's Foreign Ministry lowered the death toll from Hamas' October 7 terror attack from 1,400 to about 1,200.
- The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says the Palestinian death toll from Israel's military campaign has surpassed 11,000, overwhelmingly women and children.
- WHO chief says on average a child is killed every 10 minutes in Gaza.
- Israel's Netanyahu says he is not interested in a cease-fire.
Israeli troops and Hamas gunmen clashed Saturday outside Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza's largest medical facility, while thousands of war-wounded, medical staff and displaced civilians were caught in the crossfire.
Doctors there said the hospital was crippled after the last generator ran out of fuel, causing the death of a premature baby and four other patients.
Hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said the facility lost power Saturday.
"Medical devices stopped. Patients, especially those in intensive care, started to die," he said by phone with gunfire and explosions in the background.
Selmia said Israeli troops were "shooting at anyone outside or inside the hospital" and preventing movement between buildings.
Israeli army officials accuse Hamas of hiding weapons in tunnels under hospitals and setting up a command center beneath Al-Shifa and other hospitals, making the buildings legitimate military targets. Hamas and hospital staff deny this.
Israel Defense Forces denied firing on Al-Shifa on Friday and accused Hamas of firing a rocket aimed at Israeli troops that hit the hospital instead.
An Israeli officer, Colonel Moshe Tetro, confirmed clashes outside the hospital but denied Al-Shifa hospital was under siege or direct attack. He said he was in touch with the director and had offered safe passage for those willing to leave through the hospital's east side.
Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told broadcaster Channel 12 that taking control of the hospitals would be key to Israel's goal of rooting out Hamas. But it would require "a lot of tactical creativity" to do so without hurting patients, other civilians and Israeli hostages.
'A state of extreme panic'
Elsewhere, the Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli tanks were 20 meters (66 feet) from Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, causing "a state of extreme panic and fear" among the 14,000 displaced people sheltering there.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Saturday that the responsibility for civilian deaths and injuries lies with Hamas, and he repeated long-standing charges that the militant group uses civilians in Gaza as human shields. He said that while Israel has urged civilians to leave combat zones, "Hamas is doing everything it can to prevent them from leaving."
His statement came after French President Emmanuel Macron urged a cease-fire and asked other leaders to join his call, telling the BBC there was "no justification" for Israel's ongoing bombing.
However, Israel's military has said soldiers have encountered hundreds of Hamas fighters in underground facilities, schools, mosques and clinics during fighting in Gaza.
Israel launched its offensive in response to Hamas' October 7 terror attack in southern Israel. On Friday, Israel lowered the estimated toll to about 1,200 people killed.
"This is the updated number," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat told Agence France-Presse. "It is due to the fact that there were a lot of corpses that were not identified and now we think those belong to terrorists ... not Israeli casualties."
Hamas also took about 240 people hostages. The U.S., U.K., EU and several other Western countries have designated Hamas a terrorist organization.
Four Gaza hospitals attacked
The Palestinian death toll has steadily grown to more than 11,000, about 40% of them children, according to Palestinian officials.
The World Health Organization chief says a child dies every 10 minutes.
The head of the Palestine Red Crescent Society said Friday that four hospitals in the northern part of the Gaza Strip had been hit in a 24-hour period, accusing Israel of deliberately targeting them in an attempt to force Palestinian civilians out of Gaza.
The head of the World Health Organization told U.N. Security Council members that Gaza's health system "is on its knees" with 18 of 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary health centers not functioning.
"The situation on the ground is impossible to describe," Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "Hospital corridors crammed with the injured, the sick, the dying; morgues overflowing; surgery without anesthesia; tens of thousands of displaced people sheltering at hospitals; families crammed into overcrowded schools, desperate for food and water."
"If there is a hell on earth today," said Jens Laerke, U.N. humanitarian spokesperson, "its name is northern Gaza."
Saudi leader condemns 'barbaric war'
Saudi Arabia and Muslim countries asked Saturday for an immediate end to military operations in Gaza, declaring at the Joint Emergency Summit of the League of Arab States in Riyadh that Israel bears responsibility for crimes against Palestinians.
Dozens of leaders, including Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was welcomed back into the Arab League earlier this year, attended the summit.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler and organizer of the summit, said the kingdom affirms its "condemnation and categorical rejection of this barbaric war against our brothers in Palestine."
The United Arab Emirates plans to maintain its diplomatic ties with Israel despite international outcry over the mounting toll of the war in Gaza.
UAE officials have publicly condemned Israel's actions and repeatedly called for an end to the violence but say they also hope to have some moderating influence over the Israeli military operation in the enclave while safeguarding its own interests, according to four sources familiar with UAE government policy.
Abu Dhabi became the most prominent Arab nation to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in 30 years under the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020. That paved the way for other Arab states to forge their own ties with Israel by breaking a taboo on normalizing relations without the creation of a Palestinian state.
UNRWA Commissioner Philippe Lazzarini addressed the summit, describing the desperate situation for civilians in Gaza. He also said that in the past month, the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees has lost 101 colleagues and more that 1.5 million people have been displaced.
"Every little girl and boy I met in an UNRWA shelter asked me for bread and water,"he said. "Children used to learn and laugh in the school I visited. Now, the school is an overcrowded shelter that lacks the minimum standards for a dignified life."
'Much more needs to be done'
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that "much more needs to be done to protect civilians and to make sure that humanitarian assistance reaches them" in the Gaza Strip.
Speaking to reporters in New Delhi as he wrapped up a nine-day diplomatic tour of the Middle East and Asia, Blinken said Israel's recent military pauses are positive, but not nearly enough.
"Far too many" Palestinians have died and suffered as Israel wages a relentless war against the militant Hamas group in Gaza, he said.
Speaking at the United Nations, the U.S. envoy said Hamas' "cowardly tactics" of hiding behind human shields and beneath hospitals does not diminish Israel's responsibility to protect civilians under international law.
"Rules like proportionality and precaution still apply," Deputy U.N. Ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council. "And the risks of harm to civilians at sites that Hamas is using for military purpose absolutely have to be considered when planning an operation."
VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed reporting for this report. Some information for this article was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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