Al-Shifa and other hospitals in north Gaza, the focus of Israel’s month-old war to wipe out the Hamas and free hostages, were barely able to care for patients, medical staff said.

More people are killed and wounded daily by Israeli bombardment but there are fewer and fewer places for the injured to go.

Speaking from inside Al Shifa, Gaza health ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qidra said Israeli fire was “terrorising medical officials and civilians alike”.

Israel’s chief military spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said on Saturday Israel’s military would help evacuate babies from the hospital at the request of staff there. Al-Qidra said that of 45 babies in total, three had already died and that they had not been told how to get the babies to safety.

A plastic surgeon in the hospital said bombing of the building housing incubators had forced them to line up premature babies on ordinary beds, using the little power available to turn the air conditioning to warm.

“We know this is very risky,” Dr Ahmed El Mokhallalati told Reuters. “We are expecting to lose more of them day by day.”

In the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya also in north Gaza, Mosab Subeih, a baby boy, had been rushed in from a house struck by an Israeli missile.