US President Joe Biden urged Israel on Monday to protect Gaza's main hospital as heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas raged around the complex.
"It's my hope and expectation that there will be less intrusive action relative to the hospital," Biden told reporters in the Oval Office when asked if he had expressed concerns to Israel on the issue.
"The hospital must be protected."
Biden, who spoke as he was signing a women's health research initiative alongside First Lady Jill Biden, added that he was "in contact with the Israelis" on the matter.
He said that a deal for the "release of prisoners" was still being negotiated with the help of Qatar.
A surgeon with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the medical charity group, said that hundreds of people were stranded in the Al-Shifa hospital complex enduring "inhuman" conditions.
UN agencies and doctors in the facility warned that a lack of generator fuel was claiming lives, including those of infants.
The World Health Organisation in the Palestinian territories said early Monday that at least 2,300 people - patients, health workers and people fleeing fighting - were inside the crippled Al-Shifa facility.
US President Joe Biden looks on after signing a Presidential Memorandum establishing the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, Monday. AFP
