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

World Health Organization officials visited the hospital in Gaza on Saturday.

Thousands of people have died and thousands more have been injured since the militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign and total siege of the neighboring Gaza Strip, leaving the region on the verge of all-out war.

Click here for updates from previous days.


What we know about the conflict

The latest outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs the Gaza Strip, has passed the four-month mark.

In the Gaza Strip, at least 30,228 people have been killed and 71,377 others have been wounded by Israeli forces since Oct. 7, according to Gaza's Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health.

In Israel, at least 1,200 people have been killed and 6,900 others have been injured by Hamas and other Palestinian militants since Oct. 7, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

There has also been a surge in violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli forces have killed at least 395 people in the territory since Oct. 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The ongoing war began after Hamas-led militants launched an unprecedented incursion into southern Israel from neighboring Gaza via land, sea and air. Scores of people were killed while more than 200 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities. The Israeli military subsequently launched retaliatory airstrikes followed by a ground invasion of Gaza, a 140-square-mile territory where more than 2 million Palestinians have lived under a blockade imposed by Israel and supported by Egypt since Hamas came to power in 2007. Gaza, unlike Israel, has no air raid sirens or bomb shelters.


0

IDF raid on Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital continues for 3rd day

Israeli ground troops continued to carry out a raid on the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip for a third day.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces told ABC News that, as of 1 p.m. local time on Friday, soldiers were still inside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, some 58 hours after launching the raid.

The IDF alleges that Hamas has placed its command centers under Al-Shifa and other hospitals in Gaza and is deliberately sheltering behind Palestinian civilians -- claims that the militant group denies. While searching an area of Al-Shifa Hospital this week, the IDF claimed to have found weapons and military equipment there, evidence it says proves Hamas is using the medical complex.

-ABC News' Joe Simonetti and Morgan Winsor


150,000 liters of fuel for hospitals reportedly entering Gaza

An additional 150,000 liters (40,000 gallons) of fuel will be delivered to the Gaza Strip on Friday, according to Egyptian media.

The fuel, which is earmarked for Gaza's hospitals, will enter the war-torn enclave from neighboring Egypt through the Egyptian-controlled Rafah border crossing, according to Egyptian state-allied television channel Al-Qahers News.

Al-Qahers News reported that "Egyptian pressure on all parties have succeeded in increasing the volume of aid" and "restoring the flow of fuel" to Gaza.

World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jašarević had said last month that 150,000 liters of fuel are required to offer basic services in Gaza's five main hospitals.

-ABC News' Ayat Al-Tawy


Discussions over release of hostages remain fluid, source says

Many details remain up in the air regarding a deal to release the Hamas-held hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting in Gaza, according to U.S. officials.

One of the biggest sticking points is the number of hostages that will be released, according to an Israeli source.

Israel wants all the children, their mothers and all of their family members released, the source said. If you count just women and young children, that's about 50 hostages; if you add the family members, you get up to about 80 hostages, according to the source.

The discussions remain fluid, the source said.

It's too soon to tell if a deal will come together, but people participating in negotiations have yet to throw in the towel, the U.S. officials said.

Asked about the deal by "World News Tonight" anchor David Muir on Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. is focused "intensely" on bringing hostages home.

"But having said that, honestly the less that I say the better at this moment because we don't want to jeopardize anything that we're doing to try to bring people home," he said. "I'm hopeful that we can bring people home."

-ABC News' Shannon K. Crawford and Matt Gutman


State Department: 'Impossible' to safely evacuate patients from Al-Shifa Hospital

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller, who said earlier that the U.S. supported evacuating patients from Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital and was liaising with partners who could potentially carry that out, said Thursday the conditions in Gaza wouldn't allow for it.

"There are third parties that have expressed an interest to do so," he said, however, "it’s been impossible to ensure that they could move safely to conduct these evacuations."

He later specified that "the problem has been Hamas."

Miller again expressed confidence in U.S. intelligence supporting the assertion that Hamas was using Al-Shifa Hospital as cover for a command-and-control center.

Miller disagreed with the assertion that the evidence supplied by the Israel Defense Forces -- like weapons recovered from the hospital -- was not compelling.

“I saw a host of assault rifles," Miller said. "I’m not aware that there’s a sort of acceptable threshold level for assault rifles held in hospitals -- that’s not general humanitarian practice."

Miller later added, "It is an ongoing operation. I think people should wait until the operation is finished to draw their own conclusions.”

About 300 American citizens as well as approximately 600 legal, permanent U.S. residents and their eligible family members remain in Gaza, Miller said.

-ABC News' Shannon Crawford


Al-Shifa doctors describe hospital evacuation

Patients and doctors evacuated the Al-Shifa hospital on Saturday, after the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry claimed Israel forced them to leave. The IDF released a statement denying it ordered the evacuation, but in a Friday briefing another spokesperson said the IDF was urging anyone left in Al-Shifa hospital to leave and that it hoped it would take place in the "next few hours."

Doctors described their exodus from the hospital to ABC News, with Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati -- who is still in the hospital -- saying "all critical ICU patients have died. The situation is terrifying."

"Today early in morning people were forcefully evacuated from the hospital, with absolutely no plan of evacuation of the patients and the medical staff. Most of the civilians together with most of the staff left the hospital," Mokhallalati said.

Mokhallalati said there are around 300 patients, who cannot move, and less than 50 medical staff still in the hospital.

"There are still 33 premature babies in the hospital -- one baby died yesterday, and two babies were taken by their parents to evacuate with them. There is only one neonatologist and one nurse with them," he added. The Israelis have provided only three transport incubators for 33 babies. So, if they tell us 'you have to evacuate now,' I have no idea how to evacuate them."

Dr. Adnan Al-Barash, head of the orthopedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital, told ABC News that the "Israeli army forced us to leave the hospital at gunpoint."

"The path for us to walk was set out among the tanks, we had elderly, wounded… The scene was very tragic and sad," Al-Barash said.

"We went out between the tanks, and we could not get the wounded out on the broken roads and we could not move wheelchairs for the wounded," he added.

-ABC News' Dragana Jovanovic and Zoe Magee