Hello, welcome to the program. I'm Catherine Biaro-Hangar. We start with the developing situation at Gaza's largest hospital. In the last half hour, the Israeli military has confirmed its operation against Hamas at the Al-Shiva Hospital is still currently underway. Israel says the hospital conceives an underground command center used by Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United Kingdom, United States, and several other countries. It's a claim doctors there deny. Meanwhile, in the US, the White House and the Pentagon say they now have intelligence that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are operating from tunnels below hospitals, including our tank, the Shifah, and that they're also storing weapons there. It's the first time they have backed up Israel's claims to this extent. Despite its new intelligence, the US says hospitals and patients must be protected. In a tweet, the Israel Defense forces said, We can confirm that incubators, baby food, and medical supplies brought by IDF tanks from Israel have successfully reached the Shifah hospital. Our medical teams and Arabic-speaking soldiers are on the ground to ensure that these supplies reach those in need. The Israeli military said its actions at Al-Shifah are precise and targeted.

The Gaza Strip has been under siege by Israel Defense Forces since Hamas launched its attacks in Israel on the seventh of October. Our correspondent in Gaza, Rishdi Abu Al-Louf, has spoken to an eyewitness at the hospital.

I made another contact with the eyewitness inside the hospital, he said he saw six tanks within inside the hospital and about a hundred Israeli commandos, soldiers, they stormed the main emergency department of the hospital. He said one person of them was speaking Arabic, shouting at the people, Don't move, don't move. Then they entered the hospital after four days of besieging the hospitals with tanks from all around it and cutting access in and out. Today, the BBC was told by two eyewitnesses inside that the Israeli soldiers are storming five buildings of the hospitals. One of the witnesses, he just told the BBC that I saw six tanks and about over 100-10, the Israeli commandos units entering the main department emergency room and they were shouting in Arabic, Don't move, don't move. He said there was some shooting around and they fired a smoke bomb in the outskirts of the hospital, and then they started to move inside.

Well, thousands of people are believed to be in the complex. Here's more from our correspondent, Yoland, who's in Jerusalem.

We're still relying on some eyewitness accounts from inside the hospital that tell us how in the dead of night, Israeli forces entered. There were, they say, six tanks that went through into the front of the compound, more than a hundred commandos, some of them masked who were shouting in Arabic, don't move, don't move, as they entered the Emergency Department. This account from an eyewitness whose report we can't independently verify at the moment, but it's very clear that Israeli forces are on the premises working there. There was also someone from the Hamas-run Health Ministry who was speaking a short time ago in another television interview who said that Israeli forces had gone down into the basement of the hospital. This, of course, is where Israel has been saying consistently that it believes that Hamas has an underground tunnel complex it's been using as well as some of the buildings of the hospital. It says there's a command and controlcenter. That is denied by Hamas, but also by the medics who work at the hospital. Yesterday, interestingly, the US, for the first time, came out and said that it had its own intelligence sources corroborating those claims from the Israelis.

We haven't seen any visual proof up to now made public that this is the case. But the White House also said that hospitals and patients must be protected. And we think that within the Schiffer Hospital right now, there are accounts vary, but between 2,000 and 4,000 people. The biggest number are people who went there originally to take shelter, but there are also, of course, doctors and patients who are being treated, some of them very vulnerable, including more than 30 premature babies who were taken out of incubators because of the lack of power. That's been a big focus of international with suggestions they could be evacuated that haven't really come to any fruition. Israel has been saying consistently that it is willing to allow staff and patients to flee from the Schiffer Hospital in recent days because this standoff has been going on for some time. But what Palestinians have said is that Israeli forces fired at some of those people who were leaving, that it was too dangerous also to move those most vulnerable patients.

Well, that was the BBC's Yoland, now in Jerusalem. Well, for more on this story, let's go live now to Juliet Tuma, Director of Communications for the UN Works and Relief Agency for Palestine refugees. And Juliette, I just want to start by asking you what you make of events happening at Al-Shifah today?

We are watching with horror, we're watching these reports with absolute horror. Medical facilities should be protected at all times. But this is yet another indication that no place is safe and no place, including civilian infrastructure like hospitals, like UN facilities have not, they've not been spared during this war.

Juliet, I want to ask you about something specifically to do with the UN in Gaza. We're getting reports from Reuters news agency that a source, a humanitarian aid source, has said Israel has given approval for 24,000 liters of diesel fuel to be used by trucks for UN operations in the Gaza Strip. Can you confirm this?

No, I cannot confirm this. I like you, saw the Reuters report, and I can confirm that no fuel has come into Gaza today. Per the statement that we put out last night, we confirmed that no fuel has come into Gaza since the war began. It's been five weeks now, and in fact, we at UNRA are on the verge of having a significant reduction in our operations. And in some cases, if we do not get fuel, we will be forced to stop some of our operations that are life-saving.

But are there ongoing negotiations? Is there a possibility that an announcement could come soon allowing you to get fuel into the Gaza Strip?

There has been negotiations for many, many long weeks now about the issue of fuel. It is very simple. Fuel has been used as a weapon of war in Gaza. People have been deprived of basic services due to the lack of fuel. We at Amra have been calling to get an urgent shipment of fuel for the past three weeks, and it has been falling on deaf ears. This is obviously putting a lot of pressure on us as the largest humanitarian agency to do our work. Without fuel, we cannot work. It's very simple. It's very, very simple.

Just tell us about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. We know what's happening in the north, the ongoing fighting. In the south, we hear it was a particularly rainy night and it was quite difficult for a lot of people there in Gaza overnight.

Yes, look, the rain is going to make really desperate situation far worse, including for people who have been displaced, which is now more than three-quarters of the Gaza population, they have been forced to leave their homes. Eight hundred thousand of those are in under our shelters. They are overcrowded. We do not have fuel, again, so we cannot provide things like heating or clean water. This is why it's absolutely critical that fuel comes in and it's not a one-off shipment, by the way. There needs to be shipments of fuel on a regular basis, on a daily basis, and the amount that we need to run the largest humanitarian operation in the Gaza Strip.