CAIRO, November 14. /TASS/. The health ministry of the Gaza Strip is not against evacuating children from Al-Shifa Hospital, currently surrounded by Israeli forces, but measures must be taken to ensure their safety, the ministry’s spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said on Tuesday.

"We are not opposed to transferring children from Al-Shifa Hospital to some other clinic but there is no clear mechanism for that," he said in an interview with the Al Mayadeen television channel. "The most important thing now is these children’s lives and health."

A representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross told the TV channel that the evacuation of the sick, wounded and prematurely born babies from Al-Shifa could not be carried out without security guarantees.

The Al-Shifa administration said on November 12 that the hospital was surrounded by Israeli troops and it was impossible to evacuate it. According to the Palestinian authorities, Israeli drones are shelling the hospital’s territory. At least 170 people have died in the hospital over this time, the Gaza health ministry said.

The Palestinian government has called on the international community to "stop greenlighting the Israeli occupation army to commit new crimes against children, women and civilians, as well as against hospitals and the healthcare sector."

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said on October 27 that its intelligence data indicated that Gaza City’s central Al-Shifa Hospital, which has several underground facilities and a tunnel, is home to a Hamas command center. According to Israel's Kan broadcaster, around 200 Hamas militants have been hiding in Al-Shifa for about two weeks. Moreover, they brought hostages there who were taken during the October 7 attack on Israel.

Meanwhile, Andrea De Domenico, Head of Office for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said that the UN cannot verify information that a Hamas command center is located in the hospital. He recalled that there are around 5,000 patients in the hospital and there is no way to relocate them to a safe part of the Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Strip government said on November 12 that the IDF had destroyed part of Al-Shifa’s intensive care department, the surgical, cardiological and maternity departments, as well as shelled an oxygen line. As a result, two preterm babies and six more people died.