IDF troops on Sunday advanced in the northern Gaza Strip, capturing an urban area near Beit Hanoun as fierce fighting continued around Shifa Hospital and Israel maintained it was working to ensure that civilians and patients were unharmed in the battles.
Sunday saw sporadic rocket fire from Gaza at southern border towns, setting off sirens in the largely evacuated kibbutzim of Holit, Kfar Aza, Nahal Oz and Sa’ad. No injuries were reported. The IDF death toll in the Gaza ground operation stood at 42 as of Sunday evening, with no new casualties announced since Saturday.
Israel believes that some 240 people are being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, and while reports and rumors have swirled for days over the potential for a limited or wider hostage deal, little has so far materialized. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that “if a deal is available, we will talk about it when it’s there. We’ll announce it if it’s achievable.”
The IDF said Sunday morning that its troops were engaged in fierce battles with armed Hamas gunmen in Gaza City as they continued to fight near Shifa Hospital, where Israel says Hamas’s main underground headquarters are located. Live footage of the area appeared to show heavy fighting in the vicinity of the hospital, with the constant sounds of gunfire and explosions. Witnesses said that airstrikes had continued in the area overnight.
Health officials say thousands of medics, patients and displaced people are trapped in the area surrounding Shifa Hospital, with no electricity and dwindling supplies. The IDF has denied they are trapped, saying the east side of the hospital is open for the safe passage of Gazans who wish to leave.
Netanyahu told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Israel had offered to supply fuel to the hospital, which is in dire need of it, but that the offer was rejected.
The IDF said it was in contact with staff at hospitals in northern Gaza to aid them in safely evacuating, and denied that it had besieged Shifa, deeming such claims misinformation.
The army published a recording on Sunday of calls between a senior officer in its liaison office, the Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), and hospital staff at the Shifa, Rantisi and Nasr hospitals in northern Gaza, instructing them how to safely evacuate toward the southern part of the Strip.
Palestinians have been able to leave the three hospitals, either by foot or in ambulances, after the IDF secured routes that lead to the Salah a-Din Road, which serves as a humanitarian corridor for several hours during each day.
“Anyone who wishes to move from the hospital and toward the hospital, Al-Wehda Street, east of the hospital, is open,” a senior officer in COGAT’s Coordination and Liaison Administration told an official at Shifa. “There are no Israeli forces on the eastern side of the hospital,” the officer said.
The Israeli military also said Sunday that humanitarian pauses in the northern Gaza Strip will continue to enable Palestinians to evacuate south. The IDF’s Arabic-language Spokesman, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, wrote on X that Salah a-Din Road was open for southbound movement for a total of seven hours Sunday, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.
Additionally, he said the IDF was making “tactical pauses in military activities” in the town of Jabaliya and the nearby neighborhood of Izbat Malien between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., so that Palestinians could reach the humanitarian corridors to evacuate south.
Israel has presented evidence in recent weeks that Hamas’s main command center is located underneath Shifa and accused the terror group of using the hospital and its occupants — with 1,500 beds and some 4,000 staff — as human shields for the elaborate bunkers and tunnels beneath it.
The IDF said Sunday that in one recent incident, Givati Brigade troops identified civilians in a building, and enabled them to evacuate, but during the evacuation Hamas opened fire at the soldiers. The troops returned fire and tanks shelled the gunmen, killing them, and allowing the civilians to continue to evacuate the area, the IDF said.
The military said that troops are still engaged in intense fighting around al-Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip along the coast, taking out cells of Hamas gunmen hiding in the camp and striking a Hamas weapons depot after it was used to fire a missile.
On Sunday, the IDF said that troops in its Harel Reserves Brigade had captured the “al-Karameh area” — apparently named after a local hospital — between Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip.
According to the IDF, during the raids troops destroyed Hamas infrastructure in the area, including long-range rocket launchers aimed at Israel, anti-tank missile launch positions, tunnels and observation posts. The soldiers also killed several Hamas men during the fighting.
According to COGAT, as of Sunday morning 14,320 tons of humanitarian aid on 905 trucks have entered the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war.
“There is no limit to the amount of food, water and medical equipment that can enter Gaza,” COGAT wrote on X. “We invite the international community to coordinate and we will facilitate.”
While aid has trickled into the Strip, humanitarian organizations say it is nowhere near enough. Israel says Hamas has stockpiles of fuel and supplies that it is keeping from an increasingly desperate civilian population.
Ishaq Sidr, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of telecommunications and information technology, claimed on Sunday that telephone and internet services in the Gaza Strip would come to a complete halt on Thursday due to a lack of fuel.
While claims of basic services halting have been made repeatedly since the very beginning of the war, they have yet to materialize as fuel has not fully run out in the Strip, though Israel has continued to refuse to allow it to enter along with other aid, saying it is a key war resource for Hamas.
Speaking at a press conference in Ramallah, Sidr said that technical crews in Gaza have made tremendous efforts to keep internet and phone service going despite the ongoing military operation.
Israel launched its war on Hamas in Gaza following the terror group’s murderous rampage through southern Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 240 people captive.
The Hamas-run health ministry claims that more than 11,000 people have been killed since the start of the war. These figures cannot be independently verified, and do not distinguish between civilians and Hamas operatives, nor do they differentiate between those killed by Israeli airstrikes or in failed Palestinian rocket launches.
Tal Schneider, Gianluca Pacchiani and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.