Fears for Gaza hospital patients as Israeli ground offensive looms
Hospitals in Gaza are close to running out of food and basic supplies as fears grow for the sick and injured, ITV News Correspondent John Ray reports
Gaza health ministry says 2,670 Palestinians have been killed since start of the conflict, making it deadliest of five wars for Gaza.
More than 1,400 people have been killed in Israel and at least 155 people have been taken hostage, according to the Israeli prime minister's office.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it was planning an "air, sea and land offensive" on Gaza.
Gaza’s hospitals are expected to run out of fuel for emergency generations within two days, according to the UN.
The US is sending a second carrier group deployed to prevent ‘escalation’.
Foreign secretary James Cleverly said that around 10 British people dead or missing was not an “unreasonable estimate”.
About half a million Gaza residents have taken refuge in UN shelters across the territory and are running out of water.
Hospitals in Gaza are close to running out of food and basic supplies as fears grow for the sick and injured unable to leave the north of the city despite an Israeli warning to move south.
Hundreds and thousands of Gazans have already fled south ahead of an expected Israeli invasion a week after Hamas militants launched a deadly assault on Israel that killed more than 1,400, including at least 260 people at a music festival.
The number of Palestinian who have died in the conflict has risen to 2,670, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Sunday, making it the deadliest conflict Gaza has seen.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the Middle East is “on the verge of the abyss” and repeated his entreaties for Hamas to release hostages and for Israel to allow humanitarian aid and workers into besieged Gaza.
“Each one of these two objectives are valid in themselves. They should not become bargaining chips,” the UN chief said in a statement.
He said the UN has food, water, fuel and medical and other supplies stockpiled in Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank and Israel, ready to be mobilised to Gaza if it can be done safely.
"The goods can be dispatched within hours", he added.
Israel's staunchest allies, the US and UK, have stressed their backing but urged the country’s leaders to show restraint and discipline as the conflict escalates
Thousands of people packed into the courtyard of Gaza’s largest hospital as a refuge of last resort as overwhelmed doctors struggled to care for patients they fear will die once generators run out of fuel.
Relief groups called for the protection of the over two million civilians in Gaza urging an emergency corridor be established for the transfer of humanitarian aid as the deadline for safe passage given to Palestinians to move south to escape passed.
Doctors in the evacuation zone said they couldn't relocate their patients safely, so they decided to stay as well to care for them.
On Saturday, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it is planning an "air, sea and land offensive" on Gaza.
“The difference with this escalation is we don’t have medical aid coming in from outside, the border is closed, electricity is off and this constitutes a high danger for our patients,” said Dr. Mohammed Qandeel, who works at Nasser Hospital in the southern Khan Younis area.
ITV News' International Affairs Editor Rageh Omaar reports from Jerusalem
Israeli troops continue to position themselves along the Gaza border, supported by the US who were deploying a second carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean in a bid to deter allies of Hamas from seeking to widen the war.
Israel's staunchest allies, the US and UK, have stressed their backing but urged the country’s leaders to show restraint and discipline as the conflict escalates.
US president Joe Biden wrote on X on Sunday: "We must not lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas’s appalling attacks, and are suffering as a result of them."
The UN and aid groups said the rapid exodus south, along with Israel’s complete siege of the 40-kilometre-long (25-mile-long) coastal territory would cause untold human suffering.
WHO said the evacuation “could be tantamount to a death sentence” for the more than 2,000 patients in northern hospitals, including newborns in incubators and people in intensive care.
Gaza was already in a humanitarian crisis due to a growing shortage of water and medical supplies caused by the Israeli siege, which has also forced electrical plants to shut down without fuel.
A 40-year-old man was killed on Sunday in an exchange of fire between Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and Israeli troops.
Israel later closed off an area up to 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) from the border and ordered civilians within two kilometers to shelter in safe rooms.
In Israel, pathologists and others at a military base worked through the Jewish Sabbath to identify the more than 1,300 Israelis and others killed in Hamas's October 7 assault.
In its attack on southern Israeli communities, Hamas militants captured dozens of Israelis and some foreign or dual nationals, including children, women and the elderly, dragging them into the Gaza Strip.
British foreign secretary James Cleverly said on Sunday around 10 British people dead or missing was not an “unreasonable estimate”.
The Foreign Office urged British nationals in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including Gaza, to register as they UK worked with Egyptian authorities to open up the Rafah border to British and dual nationals.
Hundreds of relatives of the estimated 150 people captured by Hamas in Israel and taken to Gaza gathered outside the Israeli Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv, demanding their release.
“This is my cry out to the world: Please help bring my family, my wife and three kids,” said Avihai Brodtz of Kfar Azza.
Many expressed anger toward the government, saying they still have no information about their loved ones.
In a televised address Saturday night, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, accused Hamas of trying to use civilians as human shields.
“We are going to attack Gaza City very broadly soon,” he said, without giving a timetable for the attack.
Plestia Alqad, 22, a journalist from Gaza, takes ITV News through the reality of those living on the Gaza Strip, describing her home as a "ghost town."
Israelis began a voluntary evacuation from Sderot, located near the border with the Gaza Strip, on Sunday.
The military said on Sunday an airstrike in southern Gaza had killed a Hamas commander blamed for the killings at Nirim, one of several communities Hamas attacked last week. Israel said it struck over 100 military targets overnight, including command centers and rocket launchers.
Israel has called up some 360,000 military reserves and massed troops and tanks along the border with Gaza.
Militants in Gaza have fired over 5,500 rockets since the hostilities erupted, many reaching reaching deep into Israel, as Israeli warplanes pound Gaza.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had what he described as a "very productive" meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh as the Biden administration scrambled to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from becoming a broader regional conflict.
Mr Blinken will return to Israel on Monday after completing a six-country tour through Arab nations aimed at preventing the fighting from igniting a broader regional conflict.
The US was moving a second carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the eastern Mediterranean, in a show of force meant to deter any allies of Hamas, such as Iran or Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, from seeking to widen the war, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said on Saturday.
Mr Cleverly told ITV News that Hamas wanted "nothing more" than to turn the conflict into an Arab-Israeli conflict" and he had speaking to his "contacts internationally to do everything we can to prevent that being the case".
In a televised speech Saturday, Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas top official, said that “all the massacres” will not break the Palestinian people.
An Israeli airstrike near the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least 27 people and wounded another 80, Gaza health authorities said.
Most of the victims were women and children, the authorities said. Doctors from Kamal Edwan Hospital shared footage of charred and disfigured bodies.
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