KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hundreds of patients, medical staff and people displaced by Israel’s war against Hamas left Gaza’s largest hospital on Saturday. One evacuee described a panicked and chaotic scene as Israeli forces searched men among those leaving the hospital, scanning their faces and taking something.
The Israeli military has searched Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital for a Hamas command center allegedly located beneath the facility – a claim disputed by Hamas and hospital staff. The evacuation, which Israel said was voluntary, left only Israeli troops and a small number of health workers to care for those too sick to move.
“We left at gunpoint,” Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. “Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside.” He said he saw Israeli troops arrest three men.
Elsewhere in the northern Gaza Strip, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded UN shelter in the main fighting area. It caused massive destruction at the camp’s Fakhoura school, injured survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif said.
“The scenes were terrible. Bodies of women and children lay on the ground. Others screamed for help,” Radwan said by phone. AP photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.
The Israeli military, which had urged Jabaliya residents and others to leave in a social media post in Arabic, said only that its troops were active in the area “with the aim of attacking terrorists.” It rarely comments on individual attacks, saying only that it is targeting Hamas while trying to minimize harm to civilians.
“I have received horrific images and footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school that houses thousands of displaced people,” Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner General of the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said on X, formerly Twitter.
In southern Gaza, 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.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israeli forces began the operation in eastern Gaza City and continued their mission in western areas. “With every day that passes, there are fewer places where Hamas terrorists can operate,” he said, adding that the militants would learn this “in the coming days” in southern Gaza.
His comments were the clearest indication yet that the military plans to expand its offensive into the southern Gaza Strip, where Israel urged Palestinian civilians to flee early in the war. The evacuation zone is already crowded with displaced civilians and it was not clear where they would go as the offensive approaches.
It was not immediately known what led to the evacuation of Shifa Hospital. The Israeli military said it had been asked by the hospital’s director to help those who wanted to leave the hospital and that it had not ordered an evacuation. 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.
A Shifa doctor, Ahmed Mokhallalati, said on social media that about 120 patients remained, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors remained there.
According to the World Health Organization, 25 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are out of service due to fuel shortages, damage and other problems, and the other 11 are only partially operational.
Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive, claiming they were being used as command centers and weapons depots for militant militias, something both Hamas and medical staff deny.
Internet and telephone service was restored in Gaza on Saturday, ending a telecommunications outage that had forced the United Nations to halt crucial aid deliveries.
The war was sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped about 240 men, women and children. 52 Israeli soldiers were killed.
According to Palestinian health authorities, more than 11,500 Palestinians were killed. Another 2,700 were reported missing and believed to be buried under rubble. The count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that the Israeli military had “complete freedom” to operate in the territory after the war. The comments again put him at odds with U.S. visions for a postwar Gaza.
In an editorial published Saturday in The Washington Post, President Joe Biden said Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited and governed by a “revived Palestinian Authority” as world leaders push for a peaceful two-state solution work towards. Netanyahu has long opposed a Palestinian state.
The US is supporting Israel in its offensive to eradicate Hamas with weapons and intelligence support.
GROWING FRUSTRATION
Gaza’s main power plant was shut down at the start of the war, and Israel has cut power. This requires fuel to power generators needed to run water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure for Gaza’s 2.3 million people.
UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) of fuel had arrived, enough for two days, for UN use, after Israel agreed to the delivery. Israel also allows 10,000 liters (2,642 gallons) to keep internet and telephone systems running. It was not immediately clear when UNRWA would resume aid, which was put on hold on Friday because of the communications blackout.
According to the United Nations, Gaza has received only 10% of its daily food supplies from Egypt, and the shutdown of its water system has left most of the population drinking contaminated water. According to the United Nations World Food Program, dehydration and malnutrition are on the rise.
In Jerusalem, thousands of protesters – including family members and supporters of about 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza – arrived on the final leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv to ask the government to do more to bring their loved ones home bring .
The Israeli military said its planes hit a militant hideout in the Balata urban refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service said five Palestinians were killed. These deaths brought to 212 the number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the war began.
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Mroue reported from Beirut, Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Cara Anna in New York and Hannah Schoenbaum in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.
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Complete AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.