BEIRUT — A line of medical workers in scrubs — young men with bewildered expressions and a boy — walk hurriedly through the door, each gingerly cradling the tiny form of a swaddled premature baby brought from the nursery of Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital.

The footage, aired by Al Jazeera on Tuesday, was a rare glimpse inside Gaza’s largest hospital, where fuel reserves dried up on Friday and power was cut off from incubators and the lifesaving machines in the intensive care unit. The babies were being relocated from the nursery to an operating room that still had some power.

As Israeli forces pursue their mission to destroy the militant Hamas movement into the heart of Gaza City, civilians are bearing the brunt and the hospitals that once provided succor are shutting down as communications break down and fuel for generators runs out.

Gaza’s hospitals have been caught in the crossfire of the fighting, with Shifa emerging as a focal point. Israel alleges that Hamas uses hospitals — especially Shifa — to conceal their bases, while the injured and displaced living on the grounds act as human shields. Hamas accuses Israel of targeting health facilities to cut off a lifeline for residents.

The disintegration of the Gaza infrastructure also means that information is scarce about what is happening and the numbers of those affected.

“There is no ministry basically to put out a number, there is no ministry,” said Medhat Abbas, one of the Health Ministry’s directors, when asked about the latest toll. He said he hasn’t been able to speak with his colleagues, many of whom are at Shifa. “The corpses are in the street, so we can’t say any number right now, the bombardment is ongoing,” he said about Shifa.

The lack of fuel, in hospitals both in the north and in the south, has led to a breakdown in communication and made tallying the dead impossible. Damage from the fighting has also severely degraded the mobile network.

The ministry stopped updating its tally on Friday at 11,078 because of the breakdown, but it estimates that thousands more have since died. There have also been strikes on the Jabalya refugee camp and in Khan Younis since the counting stopped. Israel’s operation against Gaza came in response to the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, during which more than 1,200 were killed and at least 240 hostages were taken.

As it has pushed deeper into Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces announced it had taken over legislature and other government buildings, a police headquarters and an engineering faculty it said produced weapons.

Basem Naim, a Hamas official, told The Washington Post that government headquarters had been destroyed by Israeli bombardment and the police headquarters is also empty. “This is an attempt to create a fictitious victory,” he said. The legislative council had been “destroyed more than once before, and there are no forces in it even if they entered it.”

Since Friday, no ambulances have been allowed to reach Shifa hospital, which is now host to approximately 10,000 patients, staff and displaced people. Communication is ongoing between the director of the hospital and Israel for evacuation, said Ashraf al-Qudra, the ministry’s spokesman, but talks had not yet come to fruition.

“We are trapped inside the buildings, we can’t step outside,” said Qudra in a rare phone call Tuesday from Shifa. “Nothing is available inside the hospital: water, food, or medical supplies, that’s why we lose patients.”

He described how three babies, born premature, died a few days later as a direct result of the lack of electricity and basic necessities like water. Another 37 people have also died since Friday.

By Tuesday, Shifa’s unlit nursery had been completely emptied: The Al Jazeera footage showed a room full of empty incubators. In an operating room that still had some power, the 34 remaining infants were placed side-by-side on three beds atop teal blankets, their tiny limbs flailing as they mewled softly. Four had been born to dead mothers, Al Jazeera said.

The accounts and footage could not be independently verified by The Washington Post.

“We have no objection to evacuate the patients,” Qudra said, “but we need a safe passage, there is yet no place to house 650 patients.”

Nowhere is safe enough to evacuate to in northern Gaza: The United Nations Development Program said Tuesday it had received reports that its compound in Gaza City had been struck by a shell fired by a tank, but reported no casualties. The hit was the “second such incident in two days,” after the agency reported a separate shelling against the same compound on Saturday. Israel did not immediately respond to queries about the attack.

The United Nations estimates that hundreds of thousands remain in the north, unable or unwilling to leave. The World Food Program has already expressed concern about malnutrition and starvation. Medical workers who had spoken to The Post had echoed these fears for weeks.

The United States has recently raised pressure on Israel to address the dire humanitarian effect of its Gaza invasion. The toll of its operations has sparked protests worldwide calling for a cease-fire to stop the mounting death toll of Gazans from climbing.

Speaking at an Oval Office news conference on Monday, President Joe Biden said he is in contact with Israel about the safety of Gaza’s hospitals. “It’s my hope and expectation that there will be less intrusive action” around them, he said.

In comments to Israeli media Monday, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen estimated that the army had another two or three weeks to complete its mission before international pressure would force a cease-fire.

Israel did agree on Nov. 5 to daily pauses to allow civilians to evacuate along routes decided on by Israel. But medical workers and humanitarian groups have said evacuations are not possible due to the fighting around hospitals.

Human Rights Watch, a New-York based organization, said Israel’s repeated attacks on medical facilities, personnel and transport “should be investigated as war crimes.” In a report Tuesday, the group said concerns about “disproportionate attacks are magnified for hospitals. Even the threat of an attack or minor damage can have massive life-or-death implications for patients and caregivers.”

Since the pauses, an estimated 200,000 more people have fled the fighting raging in northern Gaza via a corridor opened by the Israeli military, the United Nations humanitarian office said Tuesday. The south is dubbed by the Israeli military as a “safer zone” in lieu of calling the area a safe zone.

Conditions in the south, in fact, are far from safe: Bombardment has continued, hospital generators there have stopped working as well, while potable water is also in short supply.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it expected its humanitarian operations to halt within 48 hours, having exhausted its fuel reserves. Its two primary water distribution contractors ceased operations on Tuesday, cutting off 200,000 people from access to potable water.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society, or PRCS, announced that the power generator at its affiliated hospital al-Amal in Khan Younis in the south had gone offline, threatening the lives of 90 patients receiving treatment and the 9,000 displaced who had sought refuge on the premises.

Sporadic violence also continued in the occupied West Bank with clashes in the town of Tulkarm. Reuters reported that at least seven Palestinians were killed there. The Israel Defense Forces said it was carrying out “counterterrorism activities” there and in the ensuing firefight, “a number of the assailants were killed.” The Palestine Red Crescent Society tweeted that an ambulance “was surrounded, inspected, and a wounded person inside was detained” by Israeli forces near the camp.

Balousha reported from Amman, Berger from Jerusalem.

previous coverage

• Blinken confronts State Department dissent over Biden’s Gaza policy
• Israeli drone strikes in Jenin signal new strategy, risk militant blowback