U.N. convoy to evacuate northern Gaza patients forced to delay

A U.N.-led convoy trying to evacuate patients from northern Gaza was forced to delay its mission for a third day Friday amid heavy fighting, the United Nations said, as Israeli forces again battled Hamas militants in the area, leaving neighborhoods under siege.

Israel launched its latest operation in northern Gaza on Saturday night, ordering swaths of the region to evacuate, including several hospitals where staff said they lacked basic supplies and were struggling to treat victims. Residents and first responders said the bombing has been relentless, especially in and around the Jabalya refugee camp, a longtime Hamas stronghold, and that there were dead and wounded lying in the streets.

The U.N.-led convoy, which left southern Gaza for the north on Wednesday, hoped to retrieve critically ill and injured patients from the Kamal Adwan Hospital and bring them south to Gaza City, officials said. But for days, despite prior coordination with the Israeli military, the vehicles were held up at checkpoints by forces on the ground or prevented from moving because of the strikes, according to Georgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza office at the U.N. agency for humanitarian affairs.

The convoy returned to southern Gaza late Thursday to regroup. “We need the Israeli military to understand that whatever it is they are going to be doing long term here, humanitarian workers need to get in there and do their work parallel to that,” Petropoulos said.

The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to a request for comment on the convoy’s movements. In an earlier statement, it said the operation to “systematically dismantle terrorist infrastructure” in the north “will continue as long as required in order to achieve its objectives.”

Four Israeli soldiers have been killed in northern Gaza in recent days, according to the IDF. And the armed wing of Hamas has circulated videos showing its fighters firing on Israeli tanks.

But the renewed fighting underscored the challenge Israel faces in routing Hamas militants while preventing civilian harm more than a year after the war began. It also raised questions about its long-term plans for northern Gaza, which Israel has isolated from the rest of the enclave but where around 400,000 Palestinians still reside, according to U.N. estimates.

“I don’t really understand what is the strategic goal regarding the north,” said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli intelligence official and head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.

Israel’s plan, he said, has been to evacuate residents and then isolate the militants. But if the residents “will not evacuate, they will starve to death,” he said.

More than 42,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children.

In Jabalya on Friday, rescue workers said Israeli troops had laid siege to the camp, which the United Nations says still has about 40,000 residents, and were firing at those who tried to leave. “There are tens of people killed and injured lying on the ground who we cannot reach,” said Fares Afana, head of the ambulance services in northern Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders said five of its staff members were stuck in the Jabalya refugee camp. “They are reporting that no one can get in and out and anyone who tries to leave is shot,” said Sarah Vuylsteke, the medical charity’s project coordinator in Gaza.

The civil defense force said it estimated at least 220 people were missing after this week’s heavy bombardment, although it was unclear how many people had been killed. Heavy airstrikes pummeled Jabalya on Friday and into the night.

At the local hospitals, doctors and administrators said they were overwhelmed with sick and wounded patients while running dangerously low on fuel and other basic supplies that had not reached them in weeks.

“Critical aid lifelines into northern Gaza have been cut off,” U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said at a briefing Friday. “No food aid has entered since Oct. 1.”

According to Munir al-Bursh, the general director of all hospitals in Gaza, about 420 patients and staff were trapped in three separate hospitals – Kamal Adwan, Al Awda and the Indonesian Hospital – as battles raged outside and Israeli strikes pounded buildings nearby.

The hospitals had received calls from the IDF earlier in the week telling them to evacuate within 24 hours, Bursh said. And on Wednesday, he said the three facilities had recorded 130 deaths over a three-day period, but added that more bodies were on the roads and under rubble, unreachable by medical teams.

“It is clear that there is a new plan to forcibly displace people from the north of Gaza by evacuating the entire health system,” said Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital.

“We have the right to still give our services to these people,” he said by phone. “We will remain steadfast and we will remain to give our services no matter what it costs.”

Gaza’s health-care system has largely collapsed, with Israel raiding and striking hospitals, arresting and displacing doctors, and restricting the import of basic medicines and medical supplies. Israel says it is targeting Hamas militants hiding in medical centers – charges health-care workers have denied.

On Friday morning, Abu Safiya shared a video of his hospital’s intensive care unit, where severely injured patients, including infants and adults, were hooked up to respirators. There is no other hospital in northern Gaza that can treat these patients, he said.

“We are facing a new challenge and a catastrophic situation that will worsen in the coming hours if there is no fuel supply for emergency services,” he said.

Nariman, 42, is a resident of Jabalya who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used for fear of Israeli retaliation. When the operation began Saturday, the bombardment was so fierce, she said, that “I felt like we were on the first day of the war.”

“We hear explosions all day long,” she said. “There are dead people in the streets everywhere that no one can reach.”

Afana said Friday that emergency workers were able to access the neighborhood of Bir al-Naja, west of Jabalya, after Israeli forces withdrew from the area. Among the dead was the father of a newborn. The infant and her mother were injured, he said. Later, the mother died of her wounds, according to a local journalist.

The United Nations estimates that about 50,000 people have left northern Gaza for Gaza City this week. In Jabalya, the IDF told residents to take a specific path if they wanted to leave the camp, but it requires passing through a military checkpoint, and locals now refer to part of the route as “the roundabout of death.”

Moamen al-Harthani, a 29-year-old resident of Jabalya, fled on Monday for Gaza City. He and around 50 family members are now sleeping on the ground in a bombed-out U.N. shelter, subsisting on bread and tea with no sugar.

But he was fearful of going south and said he planned to return to Jabalya as soon as possible. “They say the road is safe, but it is not,” he said of the route to southern Gaza. “I will not leave.”