Patients and workers leave Gaza hospital days after Israeli raid
“Medical staff will remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot evacuate,” the Israeli army said in a statement, adding that Al-Shifa had received “additional food, water and humanitarian aid” overnight provided.
It was not immediately clear how many patients, staff members or Israeli soldiers were in the complex. Munir al-Bursh, an official with the Gaza Health Ministry, said in a statement that at least 120 patients and five doctors were inside.
Some of those who have left hospitals in the north in recent weeks have ended up at the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis, in the south, where families have slept in crowded corridors and workers have scrambled to treat patients amid a shortage of beds. , said Dr. Saleh Al-Hamase, head of nursing at the hospital.
Dozens of injured people went to hospital last week after traveling almost 25 kilometers from Al-Shifa, many on foot and some in wheelchairs, said Dr. Al-Hamase. Only the most serious cases were sent by ambulance, he said.
The hospital was preparing to receive another 200 patients from Al-Shifa on Saturday, Dr Al-Hamase said.
“It will be a few more days before we run out of fuel and collapse,” he said. “The scenes in the hospital are tragic and the bombardment around us continues.”
Israeli soldiers seized the Al-Shifa hospital complex on Wednesday, saying it housed an underground Hamas command center. Both the Palestinian armed group and Al-Shifa officials have denied the accusation.
Israeli forces say they have found weapons caches in the complex and, near the hospital, the bodies of two Israeli hostages captured by Hamas during the October 7 attacks in southern Israel.
On Thursday, the Israeli army escorted journalists from The New York Times to Al-Shifa to see a stone and concrete shaft with a staircase descending into the earth – evidence, the army said, of Hamas’s presence there. But the military has not yet provided conclusive evidence of an underground military base.
The departure from Al-Shifa came as the Israeli army, which had claimed control of northern Gaza, signaled plans to expand its offensive against Hamas to the south, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled in recent weeks hoping to escape to pounding air raids and widespread destruction.
Even as Israel continued to tell civilians to flee south for their own safety, the Israeli army’s chief spokesman, Admiral Daniel Hagari, said late Friday that his forces would continue their operations “in any place where Hamas is located, and that is also in the south.” of the comic.”
His statement seemed to herald a new phase in the war, three weeks after the Israeli ground invasion.