GAZA: A fire has broken out at a surgical building at the al-Shifa Hospital due to Israeli bombing. Israeli forces there are also using loudspeakers to order hundreds of people sheltering at the hospital to evacuate, Al Jazeera Arabic reported. It said earlier that shots have been fired inside the complex, causing deaths and injuries.

Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said earlier that there would be “no obligation” for patients and medical staff to evacuate the hospital.

A Palestinian journalist trapped inside al-Shifa Hospital has described the situation in the facility as “catastrophic” amid “intense clashes” and gunfire.

“This might be my last video,” he said in a video posted on Instagram. “We’re now besieged inside al-Shifa Hospital. We’re being heavily shot at. The occupation suddenly raided the hospital and its vicinity. As you can hear now, there are intense clashes in the vicinity of al-Shifa Hospital. We’re hearing sounds coming from the gate. There are shrapnels falling over the hospital’s yard.”

He added: “We’re currently besieged. Pray for us to get out safely. These are clashes as you can hear… we don’t know what’s going on outside al-Shifa hospital, but the situation here is catastrophic.”

Israel has killed more than 13,000 children in Gaza since October 7 while others are suffering from severe malnutrition and do not “even have the energy to cry”, the UN’s children’s agency, UNICEF has said.

“Thousands more have been injured or we can’t even determine where they are. They may be stuck under rubble… We haven’t seen that rate of death among children in almost any other conflict in the world,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told the CBS News.