Israeli troops were closing in on major hospitals in Gaza City on Friday, an Israeli official said, as battles with Hamas engulfed more of the city and fears rose that patients and sheltering civilians with nowhere to flee could be harmed by Israeli strikes and running street battles.
The director of Al-Shifa Hospital, the city’s largest, said its compound was struck four times on Friday, killing seven people. Gaza’s health ministry said Israeli tanks had surrounded two adjacent hospitals in another area, trapping scores of patients and refugees inside.
A spokesman for the Israeli military, Richard Hecht, said on Friday night: “We’re aware of the sensitivity of the hospitals. That’s why we’re slowly closing in on them.”
Mr. Hecht said that Israeli forces do not fire on hospitals, but added, “if we see Hamas terrorists firing from hospitals, we’ll do what we need to do.” He also said that Israeli troops were “closing in” on Hamas in northern Gaza.
Israel has repeatedly ordered hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate along with residents in the area, and has maintained that Hamas hides military operations within hospitals, and in tunnels underneath them, using civilians as human shields.
Israel has struck sites including apartment buildings, mosques and markets, calling them legitimate targets used by Hamas’s military wing. Hospitals have also been hit, with strikes damaging medical centers and clinics across the coastal enclave. Last week, Israel struck an ambulance near Al-Shifa’s entrance, saying it was “being used by a Hamas terrorist cell.” Many displaced Gazans flooded into hospitals and schools, hoping for safety from the relentless, devastating bombing.
Videos verified by The New York Times showed what appeared to be at least one projectile flying into the Al-Shifa’s courtyard and striking an area where displaced Gazans were resting overnight. Screams could be immediately heard. One man was recorded lying on the ground in pain, his leg apparently mangled.
The director of Al-Shifa, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, said that four strikes had landed in various parts of the hospital complex between 1 a.m. and 10 a.m. local time on Friday, including the maternity building and the outpatient clinic, killing seven people.
He said that operating rooms and intensive care units were at full capacity and that doctors and nurses had been forced to leave the sides of dozens of seriously wounded people.
“If conditions were better than this, we could have saved their lives,” Dr. Abu Salmiya said. From the hospital, he said, armed clashes and powerful explosions could be heard.
The Israeli military said the projectile that hit the hospital’s courtyard had been fired by Palestinian militants at Israeli troops. Officials did not immediately respond to request for comment about the other three strikes Dr. Abu Salmiya described.
Doctors at Al-Shifa have faced dire conditions, treating a growing number of patients even as medical supplies and fuel needed to power generators have dwindled.
“At this point, there’s just so little we can do for the wounded we receive, only the bare minimum,” said Dr. Abu Salmiya. “There are people who need complex operations, but we can’t provide them, because we simply don’t have the capacity or the medication.”
The Israeli military has repeatedly singled out Al-Shifa in statements in recent weeks, saying that the hospital gives cover to a Hamas military compound. The Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told reporters last month that Hamas “does its command and control in different departments of the hospital.”
Hamas officials and Al-Shifa administrators have denied the accusations. Dr. Abu Salmiya said international organizations were welcome to investigate the site and see if they could find any evidence of Hamas’s presence there.
Inside Al-Shifa itself, staff members were preparing for the worst, including a potential Israeli ground raid into the hospital, Dr. Abu Salmiya said. They have no immediate plans to totally evacuate the complex, he added.
“We will stay with our patients,” he said.