Mobile networks, internet collapse in Gaza, threatening long-term blackout of communications

Internet and mobile services collapsed across the Gaza Strip late on Thursday for lack of fuel, the main Palestinian provider said, bringing a potentially long-term blackout of communications as Israel signalled its offensive against Hamas could next target the south, where most of the population has taken refuge.

Israeli troops for a second day searched Al Shifa Hospital in the north for traces of Hamas. They displayed what they said were a tunnel entrance and weapons found in a truck inside the compound. But the military is yet to release evidence of a central Hamas command center that Israel has said is concealed beneath the complex. Hamas and staff at the hospital, Gaza’s largest, deny the allegations.

The military said it found the body of one of the hostages abducted by Hamas, 65-year-old Yehudit Weiss, in a building adjacent to Shifa, where it said it also found assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. It did not give the cause of her death.

The communications breakdown largely cuts off Gaza’s 2.3 million people from each other and the outside world, worsening the severe humanitarian crisis in southern Gaza, even as Israeli airstrikes continue there. The UN’s World Food Program warned of “the immediate possibility of starvation” in Gaza as the food supply has broken down under Israel’s seal and too little is coming from Egypt.

The war, now in its sixth week, was triggered by Hamas’ October 7 attack into southern Israel in which the militants killed over 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and captured some 240 men, women and children. Weiss, the woman whose body was found Thursday, is the third hostage confirmed dead, while four others have been freed and one rescued.

Israel responded to the attack with a weeks long air campaign and a ground invasion of northern Gaza, vowing to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.

More than 11,470 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The official count does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths, and Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.

The war has inflamed tensions elsewhere. In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint on the main road linking Jerusalem to Israeli settlements, killing a soldier and wounding three people.

The three attackers were killed, according to police, who said the assailants had assault rifles, handguns and hatchets, and were preparing an attack in Jerusalem. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

Guns found, but so far no tunnels

A day after storming into Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli troops continued searching the complex. Gaza’s Health Ministry said the troops searched underground levels of the hospital on Thursday and detained technicians who run its equipment.

The hospital has not had electricity for nearly a week, and staff say they have been struggling to keep alive 36 premature babies and 45 dialysis patients without functional equipment.

One dialysis patient died on Thursday, Shifa’s director, Mohamed Abu Selmia, told Al Jazeera, adding that 650 wounded patients and 5,000 displaced people are in the hospital.

Israel said its soldiers brought medical teams with incubators and other supplies, though Shifa staff said incubators were useless without fuel. Gaza’s Health Ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, died before the raid after the emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday.

During previous days of fighting in the nearby streets, there was no report of Hamas fighters firing from inside Shifa, and no fighting when Israeli troops entered Wednesday.

Israel faces pressure to prove its claim that Hamas set up its main command center in and under the hospital, which has multiple buildings over an area of several city blocks. So far, it has mainly shown several caches of weapons.

On Thursday, the military released video of a hole in the hospital courtyard it said was a tunnel entrance. It also showed several assault rifles and RPGs, grenades, ammunition clips and utility vests laid out on a blanket that it said were found in a pickup truck in the courtyard. The Associated Press could not independently verify the Israeli claims.

In recent weeks, Israel depicted the hospital as the site of a major Hamas headquarters. It released satellite maps that specified particular buildings as a command center or as housing underground complexes. It released a computer animation portraying a subterranean network of passageways and rooms filled with weapons and fuel barrels. The U.S. said it has intelligence to support Israeli claims.