Israel-Palestine live: Israel and Palestinians agree to truce, hostage deal

Heavy Israeli shelling has targeted residential homes in the Jabalia refugee camp, with children among the casualties. 

Video footage shared on Al Jazeera Arabic showed residential blocks falling to the ground in a plume of smoke after being bombed.

Survivors are digging in the rubble with their bare hands to try to retrieve dead bodies. 
 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Israel is a "terror state" committing war crimes and violating international law in Gaza. 

Speaking to lawmakers in parliament, Erdogan also called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce whether Israel had nuclear bombs or not. 
 

The Palestinian health minister, Dr Mai al-Kaila, said on Wednesday that the “Israeli occupation and the international community bear the responsibility for the lives lost, including patients, medical staff, and displaced persons in al-Shifa Medical Complex.”

She called the raid on the hospital a “flagrant violation of international law” and a “crime against humanity”.

Kaila added that the storming came after a series of “crimes committed by Israeli forces, including imposing a siege, bombing and shelling aimed towards wounded, displaced and medical teams”.

The minister stated that so far, Israeli forces have killed 198 medical staff members since the start of the war, destroyed 55 ambulances, and put 25 hospitals totally out of service. 

The head of the emergencies department at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza said on Wednesday that the Israeli army was “blindfolding, stripping and taking displaced people sheltering to an unknown destination”. 

He also refuted Israeli army claims that any incubators and baby food were given to the hospital.

“We have not seen anything off the back of these Israeli claims of them bringing in milk or incubators for babies,” he said. 

“There are no clashes inside the hospital, only gunfire coming from the Israeli army,” he added.

He described the situation as “terrifying” as dead bodies begin to decay, as people have been unable to bury them. 
 

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that it has lost touch with health personnel at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza after Israeli forces raided the building. 

The WHO's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote on social media platform X: “Reports of military incursion into Al-Shifa hospital are deeply concerning.

"We've lost touch again with health personnel at the hospital. We're extremely worried for their and their patients' safety,” he added.
 

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations humanitarian affairs chief, said that he was “appalled by reports of military raids in Al Shifa hospital,” on Wednesday. 

“The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff and all civilians must override all other concerns,” he said on social media platform X.

He added: “Hospitals are not battlegrounds.”
 

Middle East Eye’s contributor Mohammed al-Hajjar is currently around 1 kilometre away from Al-Shifa Hospital in north Gaza. He describes the current situation in the past few moments: 

Israeli forces raided the al-Shifa Hospital this morning and expelled medical staff. There are around 9,000 people at the hospital, from staff to wounded people and displaced individuals. They were forced to leave to the eastern side. 

People are being searched by Israeli forces, rooms are being searched, even in the cardiovascular and kidney specialist wards.

In the last few hours, there has been heavy shelling in Gaza in al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, al-Darraj neighbourhood and Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood. Dozens of people were killed in their homes and many more were wounded. 

Drones circulated above the Baptist Hospital and before the storming of al-Shifa there was constant bombing in its vicinity, as well as in the Indonesian Hospital.

At the moment, the sound of bombing has slightly reduced, the army is focusing on southwest Gaza city, in areas such as Sheikh Radwan and Al Nasr.  
 

Staff inside al-Shifa Hospital have told Al Jazeera Arabic that the Israeli army has now bombed a medicine store room, and destroyed medical tools.

The Israeli army raid on al-Shifa Hospital has been ongoing for eight hours, with journalists inside reporting hearing explosions and live fire. 
 

Israeli forces are firing live ammunition inside the al-Shifa Hospital, al Jazeera Arabic reported. 

Jihad Abu Shanab, a journalist inside the hospital, said that “explosions can be heard clearly,” and that tanks are now outside the hospital. 
 

The head of the orthopaedic department inside al-Shifa Hospital, Adnan Barsh, told the al-Alam Radio station that “Israeli drones are shooting anything moving inside the hospital”.

Another journalist inside the hospital, Jihad Abu Shanab, told Al Jazeera Arabic that people inside the hospital buildings are “scared, brutally interrogated, and they are humiliated”.

He reiterated that the scenes inside the hospital have been a “nightmare” since the raid started. 

“Before storming the compound, they have targeted all the floors, the generators, the communications unit, and now we can have no contact with the outside world,” he added.

Video footage shared online showed medical staff and volunteers transferring babies from one ward in al-Shifa to another in order to protect them from the Israeli army raid. 

Israeli forces raided and demolished the home of Khairy al-Qam in occupied east Jerusalem. 

Local sources said Israeli forces stormed the Ras al-Amud neighbourhood accompanied by bulldozers, surrounded the al-Qam family home, and began knocking it down.

Al-Qam, 21, killed seven people and wounded three others in January. He was then killed in a shootout with Israeli police officers.

Euro-Med Monitor said that it is concerned that the Israeli army is "staging a scene" during their raid on the al-Shifa Hospital.

The rights monitor said that the Israeli army’s prevention of any health officials, media, international parties, or organisations from entering the al-Shifa Hospital during the storming will “raise concerns and doubts over any narrative that will be issued later”.

The statement, published early on Wednesday, also said that the monitor is concerned over the “sporadic gunfire heard inside the al-Shifa Hospital since it was stormed.

“The only gunfire heard was that coming from Israeli forces,” it added. 

The statement continued: “Allegations about the use of al-Shifa for military purposes would not require such a long time of raiding to uncover them. The length of time of the army inside the hospital raises concerns that the stage is being set for a pre-planned and artificial spectacle.”

Euro-Med Monitor called on Israeli forces to leave the hospital immediately and fulfil their obligations under international law regarding war and conflict, which does not allow the restriction of health workers. 
 

The Jordanian Foreign Ministry has condemned the Israeli army’s storming of al-Shifa Hospital on Wednesday, calling the move a “violation of international law, particularly the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.”

Jordan added that it holds Israel responsible for the safety of civilians and staff working at the hospital.
 

Israeli forces stormed the al-Shifa Hospital in north Gaza at midnight, after cutting off communications in the area. 

Thousands of patients, wounded people and displaced are sheltering in the hospital. 

The Israeli military maintains that they are carrying out an operation against Hamas, however, no evidence has been presented to suggest Hamas is operating from the hospital. 

Here is what we know so far.

- The raid is now in its eighth hour, and is still ongoing. The operating room is one of many that have been raided.

- Israeli forces are carrying out interrogations of medical staff and searching rooms. Checkpoints have been placed at entrances to the hospital, with everyone entering or leaving interrogated. 

- A doctor at al-Shifa told Reuters that the Israeli military had opened fire outside the hospital.

- In a recorded conversation, the Al-Shifa director told the Israeli military that entering the hospital will “terrify patients” and cause “hysteria”.

- Some doctors have decided to stay in the hospital with their patients, saying that they will be left to die otherwise. 

- The Israeli military has announced that there “is no sign of Israeli hostages at al-Shifa Hospital,” on Israeli Army Radio. 

A doctor at the Gaza Strip's Al Shifa hospital told Reuters on Wednesday that staff are hiding from Israeli gunfire during the ongoing raid.