Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza is raided by Israeli tanks and troops.

Israel said that early on Wednesday morning, its armed forces conducted a “targeted” attack against Hamas inside the main hospital in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians are reportedly taking refuge.

Intense fighting has caused conditions at Al-Shifa Hospital, which is out of fuel and no longer thought to be functioning, to rapidly worsen in recent days. Doctors have warned of a “catastrophic” situation for patients, staff, and displaced individuals who are still inside. The raid on Wednesday provoked condemnation from across the globe.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that it had started “a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital” in an online statement.

CNN was given detailed accounts of intense fighting by Palestinian news agency Wafa correspondent Khader Al-Za’anoun.

“After rocket and artillery shells were launched in the area of Al-Shifa Hospital, explosions are rocking the hospital’s buildings… which is under siege from all four directions,” he texted.

According to Al Za’anoun, Israeli forces had “invaded the hospital with large numbers of soldiers and military vehicles, including troop carriers, bulldozers, and tanks,” and they were obstructing people from getting out.

Israeli forces were in the facilities “conducting search and interrogation operations with the young men amidst intense and violent gunfire inside the hospital,” a senior Israeli defense official told journalists earlier on Wednesday. “Through megaphones, the Israeli army is calling on the young men to raise their hands, come out, and surrender themselves,” he continued.

Since then, the official media outlet for Hamas has asserted that Israeli soldiers are in control of Al-Shifa. It issued a statement saying, “We hold the Israeli occupation fully responsible for the lives and safety of medical personnel, the ill, injured, premature children, and the displaced.”

The military action at the hospital is “still underway and will take time,” IDF spokesman Daniel Haggard later stated in his daily briefing on Wednesday.

“It’s a densely populated, challenging neighborhood. We must go at the appropriate speed,” he stated.

Earlier in the day, an Israeli radio report stated that the army had not discovered any signs of captives within the hospital.

However, a senior Israeli defense officer claimed in a briefing given over 12 hours into the raid that soldiers had discovered weapons at the hospital. Later, the IDF issued a statement claiming that it had discovered a “operational command center” belonging to Hamas in one of the hospital’s departments.

The assertion was rejected by Hamas as a “blatant lie and cheap propaganda.”

Although calls to the hospital are not getting through, CNN is attempting to get in touch with the medical staff there.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s top advisor, Mark Regev, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that further details would be made public “in the coming hours and days” to support the IDF’s operation in the hospital.

“We’ve released some preliminary information, but more will come,” stated Regev. “The operation is still ongoing.”

Israel is facing intense international pressure to substantiate its allegations on Hamas’ hospital infiltration in order to support certain of its military actions, which in any other case may amount to a grave breach of international humanitarian law.

As of yet, there is no proof that soldiers have found a multi-story tunnel system with subterranean rooms similar to the one shown in an animation the army spokesman showed during a briefing about three weeks ago.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Israel accused Hamas of utilizing the expansive medical facility for military objectives, thereby endangering the hospital’s protected status under international law.

Israel has claimed that Hamas has constructed a command center beneath the hospital, a charge that has been repeatedly denied by Hamas and hospital officials.

The Pentagon and the White House said just hours before the raid that Hamas is using the hospital as a command center and a place to store weapons.

According to the Pentagon, the US has recently released material that suggests Al-Shifa and other hospitals are being used by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a “way to conceal and support their military operations and hold hostages.”

A National Security Council spokesperson, John Kirby, later clarified that Washington had neither approved Israel’s military plans or the particular operation surrounding Al-Shifa Hospital. According to Kirby, US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not discuss it during their Tuesday phone conversation.

He restated US policy that people should be shielded from the crossfire and that Israel should not attack Gazan hospitals from the air.

Human rights organizations strongly denounced Israel’s raid on Al-Shifa, while Palestinian health officials and the World Health Organization issued a warning that they had lost contact with hospital staff.

In recent days, reports of the terrible conditions in Gaza’s other hospitals suffering from a lack of fuel and acute food and water shortages have intensified international pressure on the Israeli government.

After weeks of tense talks, the UN Security Council finally achieved a long-awaited diplomatic breakthrough on Wednesday by adopting a resolution advocating for “humanitarian pauses and corridors” in Gaza. With the exception of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia, twelve nations voted in favor of the proposal.

Martin Griffiths, the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, expressed his shock at hearing about “military raids in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.”

“Every other concern must be subordinated to the protection of infants, patients, medical personnel, and all civilians. Griffiths stated on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, “Hospitals are not battlegrounds.”

As for the Israeli military’s “storming” of Al-Shifa, the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs referred to it as “a violation of international humanitarian law,” the Palestinian Minister of Health, Mai Al-Kaila, based in Ramallah, called it a “crime against humanity,” and Qatar called it “a war crime and a blatant violation of international laws.”

30-minute warning

As per the statement released by the IDF on Wednesday, Hamas’s “continued military use of the Shifa hospital jeopardizes its protected status,” as it has been warning for weeks.

It added that it had informed the appropriate authorities on Tuesday that there would be no more military operations inside the hospital for a period of 12 hours.

However, an Al-Shifa doctor informed CNN that they had only been given 30 minutes’ notice before the Israeli raid started.

We were instructed to avoid the balconies and windows. Dr. Khaled Abu Samra stated, “We can hear the armored vehicles; they are very close to the complex entrance.”

As things worsen, newborn babies at Al-Shifa Hospital are in “severe danger,” according to Gaza Hospitals Director General Zaqout.

“We’ve stated repeatedly that there isn’t a location to relocate 40 incubators outside of the hospital when it comes to evacuation,” Zaqout stated.

CNN was unable to independently verify his analysis of the circumstances. However, CNN previously published images obtained by Al-Shifa that showed infants removed from failing incubators and wrapped in foil in a last-ditch effort to survive as oxygen supplies ran out.

According to the most current reports from the hospital, thousands of people have taken refuge inside Al-Shifa in order to escape Israel’s air and ground onslaught, and hundreds of staff members and patients remain there as well.

“The IDF is conducting a ground operation in Gaza to defeat Hamas and rescue our hostages,” the Israeli statement read. Israel is not at war with Gaza’s civilian population, but rather with Hamas.

In a statement, Hamas accused the US and Israel of being involved in the Israeli army’s hospital raid. It claimed that by endorsing Israel’s “false narrative,” which holds that Hamas is utilizing Al-Shifa as a base of operations for command and control, the US has given Israel “the green light… to commit more massacres against civilians.”

After Hamas terror strikes in Israel on October 7, Israel declared war on the Palestinian terrorist group that governs Gaza and began a “complete siege” of the region. Following Hamas’s attacks, an estimated 1,200 people were killed and roughly 240 were taken hostage, the most of whom are still detained in Gaza.

Based on medical sources in Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah claims that since then, the Israeli response has killed at least 11,255 Palestinians, including 4,630 children.

“Older people’s screams and children’s cries”

Inside Al-Shifa, people have lost touch with other buildings in the complex, endangering the ability of Palestinian officials and humanitarian workers to get up-to-date information about the terrible conditions that terrified patients and medical personnel are facing.

The ER department’s supervisor, Omar Zaqout, reported that individuals were taking cover within the buildings and avoiding windows and doors.

“We’re hearing gunfire, explosions, older people screaming, and children crying, but we have no idea what’s going on outside,” Zaqout continued.

He stated he had seen people detained, stripped of their clothes, and blindfolded before, and that Israeli troops were stationed in buildings near the emergency room. Since CNN is not there, it is unable to independently confirm his story. Inquiring about these accusations, CNN also contacted the IDF, but has not received a response.

The director general of Gaza’s hospitals, Zaqout, claimed that patients, medical staff, and their escorts were questioned by the IDF.

Zaqout, who is not at the hospital but spoke with the doctors there, claimed that “some of the escorts were forced to take their clothes off.”

Israeli forces “include medical teams and Arabic speakers, who have undergone specific training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment with the intent that no harm is caused to the civilians,” according to IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari. CNN is unable to confirm Hagari’s assertions.

Zaqout, for his part, maintained that everyone within the hospital is a civilian. “At the moment, the situation is horrifying.”

Earlier this week, medical professionals and reporters reported frantic attempts to save the lives of preterm infants and confined surgeries conducted by candlelight as supplies of food, milk, and water ran low.

More than 150 bodies are expected to be buried, but hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera he was concerned the grave would not be big enough. “The smell of dead people is unbearable, most of the bodies are of women and children,” CNN quoted Al-Za’anoun, a Wafa reporter.

15 people, including six infants, have passed away at Al-Shifa in the last several days as a result of power outages and a lack of medical supplies, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, which gets its data from the area under Hamas control.

Though such a transfer would be risky, Egyptian Health Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar announced on Tuesday that efforts are underway to move 36 infants from Al-Shifa to Egypt.

According to the World Health Organization, at least 137 assaults on Gaza’s medical facilities have left at least 521 people dead and 686 injured.

After more than a month of Israeli bombardment, other protected locations including as schools, UN buildings, and civilian shelters have already suffered damage or been completely destroyed. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) declared on Monday that more than 100 UN employees had perished in Gaza since hostilities started, making this the highest number in UN history.