Gaza’s main hospital suffered a complete power outage on Saturday as Israeli forces closed in on it and the Gazan health ministry said a number of patients had died there, including a premature baby.

Al-Shifa and some other Gaza City hospitals have increasingly come under Israeli siege over the past few days. Hundreds of seriously ill and wounded patients and displaced people have been stranded on the grounds while intense, close-quarters combat between Israeli troops and fighters from Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that controls Gaza, rages in areas around them.

Israeli tanks and troops have surrounded several hospitals in the territory and attacked them, hospital administrators and the health ministry said on Saturday. An Israeli military spokesman said on Friday of the hospitals that "we’re slowly closing in on them" and urged people to leave.

The Israeli military has accused Hamas of operating an underground command centre below Al-Shifa, using the hospital as a shield. Both the hospital’s administration and Hamas have denied the allegation.

By Saturday, Al-Shifa was struggling to keep patients alive.

The Gaza health ministry said at least five wounded patients died on Saturday there, including a premature baby in an incubator, as a result of the power outage. Without fuel to run generators, the hospital has been plunged into darkness, the health ministry and the hospital’s administrator said.

“Surgeries have had to stop. Kidney dialysis has stopped and the neonatal unit is in a very dire situation,” said the director of Al-Shifa, Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya. “A baby has died because of lack of oxygen and electricity and heat.”

Highlighting the dangers to hospitals on Friday, at least one projectile struck inside the Al-Shifa complex and a video appeared to show people being turned back by gunfire as they tried to evacuate another hospital. The strikes and fighting are threatening the lives of hundreds of Palestinians who have sought shelter in Al-Shifa, believing it would be the safest place.

The hospital has 37 premature babies in incubators, Medhat Abbas, the director-general of Gaza’s health ministry, said in a text message on Saturday, adding that medical staff had been performing manual artificial respiration on some of them for three hours.

The power outage is the result of an Israeli siege of Gaza for the past month that has cut off water, food, electricity and fuel.

Israel imposed the siege days after an attack on Israel by Hamas that killed more than 1,000 people, according to the Israeli authorities.

The lack of power has forced surgeons to operate by flashlight and doctors and nurses to run ventilators by hand to keep patients alive.

Food, water and medicine are also in extremely short supply and medical workers have reported that they have had to perform some surgeries, including amputations and brain operations, without anaesthesia.

New York Times News Service