Patients, staff and displaced people left Gaza’s largest hospital on Saturday, health officials said. All that remained were a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move and Israeli forces to control the facility.
The World Health Organization declared Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital a “death zone” and called for a complete evacuation, Agence France-Presse reported.
The Israeli military raided the sprawling Al-Shifa Hospital complex on Wednesday and remained there, searching floor by floor and room by room for Hamas militants and any evidence of an alleged underground Hamas command center. US officials said they also had evidence of a Hamas command center – something the military group and hospital staff deny.
Israel’s claims that Hamas had established itself in civilian areas and hospitals were central to justifying the massive military campaign the country launched after Hamas’ devastating attack on Israel on October 7.
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On Saturday, the military said the hospital’s director had asked it to help those who want to leave the hospital do so safely. The military said it had not ordered an evacuation and that medical staff were allowed to remain at the hospital to care for patients who could not be moved.
But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, said the military had ordered the facility to be evacuated and given the hospital an hour to get people out.
Patients and medics are pictured at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on November 10, 2023. AFP via Getty Images
After it became apparent that the evacuation was largely complete, Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, a Shifa doctor, posted on social media that there were about 120 patients left who could not walk, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other patients had left the hospital and doctors remained behind to take care of them.
It was not immediately clear where those who left the hospital had gone, as the World Health Operation said 25 hospitals in Gaza were inoperable due to fuel shortages, damage and other problems and the other 11 were only partially operational.
The exodus from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City came on the same day that internet and telephone service was restored in the Gaza Strip. That ended a telecommunications outage that forced the United Nations to halt crucial humanitarian aid deliveries because it could not coordinate its convoys.
Israel continued to expand its offensive in Gaza City, with the military warning in a social media post in Arabic that residents of two neighborhoods to the east and north, as well as the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, must be evacuated for their safety. It said military activities would be briefly suspended to allow them to leave. Earlier this week, Israel’s defense minister said troops had completed their operations in western Gaza City.
CBS News was recorded with Israeli military personnel at Al-Shifa Hospital
Attacks also continued in the south of the Gaza Strip. An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken. Another 20 were injured, said Dr. Nehad Taeima from Nasser Hospital.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during his weekly media address on Saturday evening that Israel was sending two fuel trucks a day to Gaza to prevent the outbreak of the disease.
Israel rarely comments on individual attacks, saying only that it is targeting Hamas and trying to avoid harm to civilians. Women and children were among the dead in many Israeli attacks.
Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel would make every effort to complete its operation in Gaza “with minimal civilian casualties.”
“That is what we want to achieve: minimal civilian casualties. But unfortunately we are not succeeding,” Netanyahu told CBS Evening News’ Norah O’Donnell, blaming Hamas for his military’s unsuccessful efforts, which he called “an ‘accident.’ “Theological crazy sect” which he accused of deliberately trapping Palestinian civilians behind their fighters to use them as human shields.
Most of Gaza’s population is now seeking refuge in the south, including hundreds of thousands of people who have heeded Israel’s calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north to avoid its ground offensive.
President Biden called for a two-state solution in an editorial Saturday in the Washington Post, writing: “The international community must provide resources to support the people of Gaza in the immediate aftermath of this crisis, including interim security measures” and establish a reconstruction mechanism to sustainably meet Gaza’s long-term needs. And it is imperative that terrorist threats never again come from Gaza or the West Bank.”
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