Israel's military says it is ready to evacuate babies from Gaza's largest hospital, where Palestinian officials said two newborns had died and dozens more were at risk from a power outage amid intense fighting in the area.
Al-Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza were barely able to care for patients. More people are wounded daily by fierce Israeli bombardment.
Speaking from inside the biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said Israeli fire had not hit it directly overnight but was "terrorising medical officials and civilians alike".
Israel's chief military spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said on Saturday Israel's military would help evacuate babies from the hospital at the request of staff there. Al-Qidra had said there were 45 babies in total and two had already died.
"We have not been informed about any mechanism to get the babies out to a safer hospital. So far we are praying for their safety and not to lose more of them," Al-Qidra said.
In the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Mosab Subeih, a baby boy, had been rushed in from a house that was struck by an Israeli missile.
"He has a direct injury to the head and bleeding, and we have no surgeries," said one of the medics, who were treating him with a manual resuscitator as power had been cut.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said medical staff at another hospital in northern Gaza, Al-Quds, were struggling to care for those there with little medicine, food and water.
"Al Quds hospital has been cut off from the world in the last six to seven days. No way in, no way out," Tommaso Della Longa, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told Reuters.
On Sunday, Israel said people could safely evacuate from three hospitals in northern Gaza, including Shifa, via one of its exits. Hospital director Mohammad Abu Selmeyah told Al Arabiya television that there was no safe passage out.
As the humanitarian situation across Gaza worsened, its border authority said the Rafah crossing into Egypt would reopen on Sunday for foreign passport holders.
Very little aid has entered Gaza since Israel declared war on Hamas more than a month ago after militants rampaged through southern Israel, killing about 1200 people and taking more than 200 hostage, according to Israeli officials.
Palestinian officials said on Friday that 11,078 Gaza residents had been killed in air and artillery strikes since then, around 40 per cent of them children.
Hamas said it had completely or partially destroyed more than 160 Israeli military targets in Gaza, including more than 27 tanks and vehicles in the past 48 hours. An Israeli military spokesperson said Hamas had lost control of northern Gaza.
At a news conference late on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the deaths of five more Israeli soldiers in Gaza. The Israeli military said 46 had been killed since its ground operations there began.
Residents said there was increased fighting around Al-Shati refugee camp, by the coast in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said it had killed a number of militants there and called on civilians to use a four-hour pause to evacuate south.
Palestinian health officials said 13 people had been killed in an Israeli air strike on a house in Khan Younis on Sunday.
Israel has said doctors, patients and thousands of evacuees who have taken refuge at hospitals in northern Gaza must leave so it can destroy what it says are Hamas command centres under and around them. Hamas denies using hospitals this way.
Israel's three major TV news channels said on Saturday there was some progress toward a deal to free hostages held by Hamas in Gaza but there was little sign of one on Sunday.
They did not cite any named sources and there was no public comment from Hamas or Israel on the reports.
