Palestinian officials said a field hospital sent by Jordan entered the Gaza Strip Monday, the first since the war between Israel and the territory's rulers Hamas erupted on October 7.
"The hospital will be established in Khan Yunis, to receive the wounded and the sick, under catastrophic conditions which southern hospitals are experiencing, with the influx of hundreds of wounded each day and continued aggressive aerial and artillery strikes," said Mohammed Zaqout, director-general of Gaza hospitals.
There are around 30,000 wounded people across Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.
The death toll in Gaza has hit 13,000, mostly civilians, the ministry said Sunday.
The war broke out when Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while around 240 were taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
Weeks of intense bombardment and severe shortages of fuel and medical supplies have meant most Gaza hospitals have stopped functioning.
Aed Yaghi, head of medical aid in Gaza, said the field hospital will help ease the pressure on existing health services.
"The number of medical personnel is limited and there aren't (enough) ambulances," Yaghi told AFP.
The Jordanian field hospital reached Gaza accompanied by 170 personnel and 40 trucks of medical aid.
All goods and individuals entering Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt are subject to Israeli approval.
The head of Gaza's crossings authority, Hisham Adwan, said six ambulances from Kuwait also entered the territory on Monday.
29 Gaza babies evacuated to Egypt as Hamas reports deadly hospital strike
Twenty-nine premature babies were evacuated from war-torn Gaza to Egypt on Monday as the Hamas-run health ministry accused Israel of launching a deadly strike on the territory's Indonesian Hospital.
Frantic diplomatic efforts were meanwhile underway to seal a deal for the release of some of the 240 hostages Hamas militants took during their October 7 attacks on Israel.
The Gaza health ministry charged that Israel's army killed at least 12 people in a strike on the Indonesian Hospital in the Palestinian territory's north, a war zone where entire city blocks have been reduced to rubble.
Those killed included patients, said Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman of the ministry which has reported a death toll of more than 13,000 as the Gaza war rages on into its seventh week.
Dozens more were wounded and around 700 people remained trapped inside the "besieged" medical centre, Qudra said.
Israel did not immediately comment but pushed on with its withering air and ground campaign aimed at destroying Hamas in response to the October 7 attacks it says killed 1,200 people.
More than 2.4 million Palestinians are trapped in besieged Gaza and only a few hundred war-wounded and foreign passport holders have been allowed out.
On Monday Egyptian media reported that 29 premature babies evacuated from Gaza's biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, had been taken to safety in Egypt through the Rafah crossing.
A medical source told AFP the infants would be treated at El-Arish hospital 45 kilometres (28 miles) west of the Gaza Strip or be taken to Ismailia or Cairo.
The bloodiest ever Gaza war has seen Israeli troops raid, occupy and evacuate Al-Shifa hospital in recent days, spurring hundreds to flee the area on foot toward southern Gaza.
Israel, backed by the United States, argues that Hamas has used vast tunnel networks below Al-Shifa for military purposes. It has shown recovered weapons but was yet to reveal evidence of a major military headquarters below ground.
After another Gaza building was hit, in Deir al-Balah south of Gaza City on Sunday, rescuers searched through the debris for survivors and bodies, using the lights of their mobile phones in the rain.
"There are only children and women in the house and no one else," exclaimed one resident.
"How can that give them (the Israeli army) an excuse to hit it? ... We don't have any equipment to pull people out from under the rubble."
Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 12 killed in hospital strike
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said Monday 12 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a hospital in the north of the Palestinian territory.
The 12, including wounded patients and their companions, "were killed and dozens wounded as a result of the Israeli occupation targeting the Indonesian Hospital", said ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra.
The ministry director said it had not been possible to recover the bodies.
"The (Israeli) occupation has destroyed some buildings of the Indonesian Hospital, and other buildings are under sniper fire," Munir al-Bursh said from the hospital.
Israel launched its offensive against Hamas after a wave of brutal cross-border raids on October 7 left 1,200 people dead, the majority of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
The Hamas-run government says the death toll from Israel's aerial bombardment and ground operations in the Palestinian territory has reached 13,000, thousands of them children.
Bursh said the 140-bed Indonesian Hospital currently has 650 patients, more than 100 of whom require urgent surgery.
The Israeli military previously ordered residents of northern Gaza to flee southwards and said Sunday it was "expanding its operational activities".
Bursh said Israeli forces "targeted" people trying to leave the Indonesian Hospital.
Israeli strikes have hit "the clinics and surgeries floor at the hospital, destroyed equipment and bodies are piled up", he said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment by AFP.
The Hamas government has repeatedly accused Israel of launching a "war against hospitals", which scores of strikes on and near medical facilities in recent weeks.
The Israeli military says the Hamas militant group has built underground infrastructure below hospitals for military usage, which Hamas and medical officials deny.
On Sunday it released what it said was footage of hostages being brought in to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the territory's largest, where it said it had discovered a 55-metre long "terror tunnel".
The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA has reported the "collapse of services" at hospitals across northern Gaza, following widespread strikes and the lack of fuel and medical supplies.
Al-Shifa was described Sunday as a "death zone" by the World Health Organization, in the wake of incursions by Israeli soldiers and multiple strikes on the facility.
More than 250 patients and 20 healthcare workers remain at the hospital, WHO said after 31 premature babies were evacuated southwards, 28 of whom were transferred to Egypt on Monday.
Israel's response to Hamas attack 'inexcusable': AU chief
The African Union said Monday that Israel's response to Hamas's massive attack last month was "inexcusable", warning that civilian casualties would fuel further "extremism".
"The acts (of Hamas) are reprehensible... but the response is inexcusable," AU chairman Azali Assoumani told a press conference in Berlin.
"Imagine a child who has seen his mother, who has seen his father killed... it creates extremism," he said.