By Emma Farge
GENEVA (Reuters) -The U.N. children's charity called on Monday for an immediate evacuation to save at least 25 ill or premature babies in incubators in Gaza City as Israel steps up its ground offensive, shelling a hospital overnight housing around half of them.
Palestinian health officials say tanks are surrounding the area near Al Helo Hospital where at least 12 babies are in incubators. Medics said the site was shelled. Video obtained by Reuters showed hospital rooms and beds there strewn with debris.
"It is time to move them because Gaza City again has become a combat zone, but moving them where? There is no safe place for them to go," UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires told Reuters.
Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Evacuation of the babies, many of them newborns, will mean moving them to makeshift carts, wrapped in blankets with portable oxygen supplies and drips, Pires said. Still, they could be exposed to infection, variable temperatures or supplies could run out during the transfer.
"Moving them seems like the best option we have now...but at the same time, it's a very risky one."
It was not immediately clear which hospitals could take the babies, with many damaged, overcrowded and facing shortages.
Pires was in Gaza City last month where he saw one of the babies - a premature girl named Narges who, he said, had been removed from the womb of her dead mother who had been shot in the head.
"We're very concerned not only about her, but all the other babies," he said, saying efforts to reach her father and her doctors since the shelling had been unsuccessful.
In Gaza City, there are more babies than incubators and some of them are sharing, he said, adding that Israel had denied some requests to import more. Pires said he saw four in one incubator last month.
Israeli authorities could not be reached for comment on the accusation they had denied requests to bring in incubators.
Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have been displaced by the offensive on Gaza's famine-struck north where shortages are worsening. Israel has said it will not halt fighting unless Hamas frees all hostages and permanently surrenders.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Alexander Cornwell in Jerusalem)
