• Demands complete evacuation of staff and patients
• UN chief says relief requires Israel to remove obstacles

CAIRO: Israeli forces besieged two more Gaza hospitals on Sunday, pinning down medical teams under heavy gunfire, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, and Israel said it had captured 480 fighters in continued clashes at Gaza’s main Al Shifa hospital.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said one of its staff was killed when Israeli tanks suddenly pushed back into areas around Al-Amal and Nasser hospitals in the southern city of Khan Younis, amid heavy bombardment and gunfire.

Israeli armoured forces sealed off Al-Amal Hospital and carried out extensive bulldozing operations in its vicinity, the Red Crescent said in a statement, adding: “All of our teams are in extreme danger at the moment and are completely immobilised.” It said Israeli forces were now demanding the complete evacuation of staff, patients and displaced people from Al Amal’s premises and were firing smoke bombs into the area to force out its occupants.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said dozens of patients and medical staffers had been detained by Israeli forces at Al Shifa in Gaza City.

In Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town on the Egyptian border town that has become the last refuge for half of Gaza’s uprooted population, an Israeli air strike on a house killed seven people, health officials said.

At least 32,226 Palestinians have been killed, among them 84 in the past 24 hours, and 74,518 injured in Israel’s air and ground offensive since Oct 7, the health ministry said in a Sunday update.

Guterres urges Israel to remove obstacles

Meanwhile, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said on Sunday in Cairo that delivering the necessary aid to famine-threatened Gaza “requires Israel removing the remaining obstacles and chokepoints to relief”.

Guterres repeated his call for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” to alleviate “the plight of Palestinian children, women and men struggling to survive the nightmare in Gaza”, during a joint press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.

He had visited on Saturday the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, where nearly six months of war and siege have displaced the vast majority of the territory’s 2.4 million people and destroyed its civilian infrastructure. Guterres called the Rafah border crossing and Egypt’s El-Arish airport where assistance is sent “essential arteries for life-saving aid into Gaza”.

CIA, Mossad chiefs leave Qatar

In a relevant development, US intelligence chief William Burns and his Israeli counterpart David Barnea left Qatar late Saturday following talks on a Gaza truce and prisoner release deal, a source briefed on the talks told AFP.

“The talks focused on details and a ratio for the exchange of prisoners,” the knowledgeable source added, explaining that “technical teams remain in Doha”.

US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have been engaged in weeks of behind-the-scenes talks in efforts to secure a second truce.

One killed in east Lebanon

Separately, an Israeli strike on a car near the Syrian border killed a man on Sunday, a security source said, after overnight fire wounded four people in Lebanon’s east, according to an AFP correspondent.

“Israeli fighter jets targeted a vehicle in the eastern Bekaa area of Suwairi, killing its Syrian driver,” a security source told AFP, requesting anonymity for security concerns.

Earlier on Sunday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency had said a strike on a vehicle in Suwairi injured the driver, before reporting that he had been killed.

Overnight on Sunday, an AFP correspondent said Israeli strikes targeted a Hezbollah centre that had been deserted for some time, wounding four residents in nearby buildings.

Later, Hezbollah said it fired “more than 60 Katyusha-type rockets” at two Israeli military positions in the occupied Golan Heights in response to the Israeli strikes.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2024