Israel-Gaza updates: IDF says it exposed Hamas tunnel under Shifa Hospital

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Monday that heavy bombardment and explosions around Al-Quds Hospital, the second-largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, is hindering the evacuation of patients and medical staff trapped inside.

A convoy of vehicles accompanied by the International Committee for Red Cross that had set off from southern Gaza toward central Gaza to secure the evacuation of Al-Quds Hospital was forced to turn around on Monday, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

"The convoy was forced to return due to the dangerous conditions in the Tal al-Hawa area, where the hospital is located, in light of the continuing shelling and shooting, and the medical staff, patients and their companions are still trapped inside the hospital without food, water or electricity," the Palestinian Red Crescent Society wrote in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

-ABC News' Ayat Al-Tawy and Morgan Winsor

The Israel Defense Forces said Monday morning that its "troops are continuing to conduct raids" on the outskirts of the Al-Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, "targeting terrorist infrastructure located in central governmental institutions in the heart of the civilian population, including schools, universities, mosques, and residences of terrorists."

The IDF alleged that "terror infrastructure" belonging to Gaza's militant rulers, Hamas, was "deliberately located inside civilian structures" within the area, including inside the Al-Quds University and the Abu Bakr mosque.

"The troops uncovered a section of the mosque which housed a large number of explosive devices and flammable materials," the IDF said in a statement. "During the activity, the troops seized dozens of weapons, military equipment, and operational plans belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization."

The IDF also alleged that its ground troops discovered "a large number of weapons" inside a children's bedroom within the home of a senior official of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group based in Gaza.

Since Oct. 7, in response to Hamas' deadly attack on Israel, the IDF said its aircraft and ground forces have conducted 4,300 strikes on Gaza, hitting "hundreds of anti-tank missile launch posts, approximately 300 tunnel shafts, approximately 3,000 terrorist infrastructure sites, including over 100 structures rigged with explosives, and hundreds of Hamas command and control centers."

-ABC News' Morgan Winsor

Doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza say they are doing everything they can to try and keep 36 premature babies alive.

Hospital staff had to take the infants out of the incubators, making the situation dire, Ahmed Mokhallalati, Head of the Plastic Surgery department at the hospital, told ABC News Sunday. As ABC News reported earlier Sunday, a missile struck nearby and shut down the medical facility's backup generator, according to a doctor working at the hospital.

"The neo-nates -- they are the ones we are afraid will be dying one by one as we were pushed to move them outside of the incubator area," Mokhallalati said.

On Sunday evening, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that Hamas is preventing the rescue of these babies.

"The hospital also requested to consider assistance with safely evacuating the premature babies. We also answered this request and are ready to help. Hamas leadership, alongside the Hamas Ministry of Health, is preventing this and placing pressure on the Shifa hospital [not to accept our help]," Hagari said. "If the hospital requests, we will assist them with fuel and with evacuating the premature babies. The fuel is for essential systems only and the evacuation of the babies will be to another hospital. Our communication with the Shifa Hospital will continue."

When asked why Al-Shifa Hospital didn't take 300 liters of fuel offered by the IDF, he said because the number, compared to what they need daily, which is 10,000 liters, wouldn't amount to more than an hour of power.

The staff at Al-Shifa also calculated it was not worth the risk, with doctors reporting on Saturday that those who had tried to flee the hospital had been fired on.

"We feel it would be unsafe to get these 300 liters," a hospital worker said.

The director of the Surgical Hospital at Al-Shifa, Dr. Nidal Abuhadrous, is calling for the ICRC to give hospital staff and patients safe passage out of the complex.

-ABC News' Zoe Magee, Matt Gutman and Sami Zayara

At least three premature babies have died at the Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip when a missile struck nearby and shut down the medical facility's backup generator, according to a doctor working at the hospital.

Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalti, the chief plastic surgeon at the hospital, told ABC News that the babies died when the power to their incubators was cut off Friday night into Saturday morning.

Mokhallalti said all of the hospital's ventilators were back up and running Sunday, but he expressed fear that more people would die at the hospital due to the relentless bombing.

Hospital officials said two patients in the hospital's intensive care unit also died on Sunday due to complications caused by the shelling.

The international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders has made repeated calls for the shelling of hospitals in Gaza to cease.

"We are nearly sure that we are alone now. No one hears us," Dr. Mohammed Obeid of Doctors Without Borders said in a video statement from the Al-Shifa Hospital on Saturday.

Obeid said there are about 600 patients at the hospital who need medical care and need to be evacuated.

"The problem is [we need] to be sure we can evacuate the neonatal patients because we have 37 to 40 premature babies," Obeid said. "We have about 17 other patients in the ICU, and we have 600 postoperative patients who need medical care. So the situation is very bad. We need help."

-ABC News' Zoe Magee, Matt Gutman and Sami Zayara