in text for good measure:

The five premature babies were particularly vulnerable. They needed oxygen, & medication administered at regular intervals. There were no portable respirators or incubators to transport them. Without life support, the nurse feared, they wouldn't survive an evacuation.

Then the IDF delivered an ultimatum, al-Nasr director Bakr Qaoud told The Washington Post: Get out or be bombarded.

An Israeli official, meanwhile, provided an assurance that ambulances would be arranged to retrieve the patients.

The nurse, a Palestinian man who works with Paris-based Doctors Without Borders, saw no choice. He assessed his charges & picked up the strongest one - the baby he thought likeliest to bear a temporary cut to his oxygen supply. He left the other four on their breathing machines, reluctantly, & with his wife, their children and the one baby, headed south.

"I felt like I was leaving my own children behind," said the nurse, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy. "If we had the ability to take them, we would have, [but] if we took them off the oxygen they would have died."