Medics, on Monday, evacuated 28 prematurely born babies from Gaza’s biggest hospital and took them to Egypt for urgent treatment.
Palestinian authorities and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said 12 people died in another Gaza hospital encircled by Israeli tanks.
The newborns had been in north Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital, where several others died.
They died after their incubators were knocked out amid a collapse of medical services during Israel’s military assault on Gaza City.
Israeli forces seized Shifa last week to search for what they said was a Hamas tunnel network allegedly built underneath the hospital.
Hundreds of patients, medical staff and displaced people left Shifa at the weekend. Doctors said they were ejected by Israeli troops. But the troop claims the departures were voluntary.
Live footage aired by Egypt’s Al Qahera TV showed medical staff carefully lifting infants from inside an ambulance and placing them in mobile incubators. They then wheeled the incubators a car park towards other ambulances.
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Medics transported the babies, on Sunday, to a hospital in Rafah, on the southern border of Hamas-ruled Gaza.
This is to ensure their condition stabilise ahead of transfer to Egypt.
The head of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, confirmed that medics flew 12 babies to Cairo.
All of the evacuated babies were “fighting serious infections”, a WHO spokesperson said.
Eight infants have died since doctors at Shifa originally raised an international alarm this month about 39 premature babies.
The doctors said the babies were at risk from a lack of infection control, clean water and medicines in the neo-natal ward. (Reuters)
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