MUMBAI – Near Gaza’s embattled Al-Shifa hospital, three nuns of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity are currently struggling to support roughly 60 trapped people, including the elderly and disabled, with only intermittent contact with the outside world, according to an India-based priest who recently spoke with one of the sisters.

Fighting around the hospital has been especially fierce, as Israel accuses Hamas of running a command centre in tunnels under the hospital, and of using doctors and patients as human shields. On Sunday, roughly 30 newborn children were evacuated from the hospital by medics from the Palestinian Red Crescent and the World Health Organization and allowed to cross into Egypt for care.