Israel Defence Forces say they are carrying out a “precise and targeted operation” in Gaza’s stricken Al Shifa Hospital.

There were multiple reports on Wednesday morning that the IDF was actually inside the hospital, which Israel claims terror group Hamas is using to conceal its military operations and hold hostages.

“We can see them pointing the guns of the tanks toward the hospital. We are not sure whether soldiers are inside the hospital [buildings], but they are inside the complex with the tanks,” Khader Al Za’anoun, a reporter for the Palestinian news agency, Wafa, told CNN.

He said there had been gunfire exchanges across the hospital compound, and windows in one building were blown out.

It came as the White House said on Wednesday (AEDT) that independent intelligence supported Israel’s claims.

The IDF later confirmed the hospital raid.

“The IDF is conducting a ground operation in Gaza to defeat Hamas and rescue our hostages. Israel is at war with Hamas, not with the civilians in Gaza,” the Israeli statement read.

Medics with “specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment” were among the Israeli forces, the IDF said.

Also on Wednesday, the IDF said it had captured Gaza’s parliament building and other government institutions run by Hamas in Gaza City.

Military units “took over the Hamas parliament, the government building, the Hamas police headquarters and an engineering faculty that served as an institute for the production and development of weapons,” the army said in a statement.

The statement said “government institutions of the terrorist organisation Hamas” had been used for “military purposes” including “for training in preparation for the attack on Israel” on October 7.

Earlier, Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip, told Al Jazeera that Israel had “informed us that it will raid Al Shifa hospital complex in the coming minutes”.

Five weeks after Israel swore to destroy Hamas in retaliation for militants’ deadly cross-border assault, the fate of Al-Shifa has become a focus of international alarm.

Hamas says 650 patients and 5000 to 7000 other civilians are trapped inside Al-Shifa hospital grounds, under constant fire from Israeli snipers and drones.

Amid worsening shortages of fuel, water and supplies, it said 40 patients had died in recent days, including three premature babies whose incubators were knocked out.

Palestinians trapped in the hospital were digging a mass grave to bury patients who died and there was no plan to evacuate babies despite Israel announcing an offer to send portable incubators, Al-Qidra said earlier on Wednesday (AEDT).

An Israeli officer who oversees co-ordination with Gaza said he had been in contact with Al-Shifa’s hospital director and presented a plan to evacuate the babies through a safe corridor, possibly to Egypt.

Al-Qidra said no such arrangements had been made.

“The occupation is still besieging the hospital and they are firing into the yards from time to time,” he said.

He said there were about 100 bodies decomposing in the hospital and no way to get them out.

“We are planning to bury them today in a mass grave inside the Al-Shifa medical complex,” Al-Qidra said.

“It is going to be very dangerous as we don’t have any cover or protection from the ICRC,” he said, referring to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Israel denies the hospital is under siege and says its forces allow exit routes. Medics and officials inside say those trying to leave come under fire.

White House spokesman John Kirby said on the presidential plane, Air Force One, that intelligence had confirmed Hamas used tunnels underneath Al-Shifa and other hospitals to conceal military operations and hold hostages.

Israel has made the same claims, which Hamas denies.

“We have information that confirms Hamas is using that particular hospital for a command and control node” and probably to store weapons, Kirby said. “That is a war crime.”

Kirby said the US intelligence came from a variety of methods.

Hamas said on Telegram it rejected US claims about its use of hospitals and that they “give a green light to the Israeli occupation to commit further brutal massacres targeting hospitals”.

Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch, said even if Hamas was proven to be using hospitals to conduct military operations, international law required effective warnings be given before attacks.

This meant people there needed a safe place to go and a safe way to get there, Shakir said.

“It’s very alarming because you have to remember hospitals in Gaza are housing tens of thousands of displaced persons.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was deeply disturbed by the “dramatic loss of life” in the hospitals, his spokesman said.

Medical officials in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 11,000 people are confirmed dead from Israeli strikes, around 40 per cent of them children, and countless others trapped under rubble.

Around two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been made homeless.

-with AAP