Hundreds of Palestinians – displaced people and patients – are fleeing al-Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, after Israel’s military forces ordered them to leave and threatened to attack the medical complex.
Videos shared by medics on social media on Wednesday show crowds of displaced Palestinians, carrying their belongings and beddings, making their way out of the hospital as explosions are heard in the background.
Medical Aid for Palestinians said around 400 patients are in critical condition at the al-Nasser hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in the territory.
The charity said that despite the regime’s evacuation order, it is not safe for people to leave the hospital as military forces have surrounded the complex.
In a statement, Israel’s military said it “does not intend to evacuate patients and medical staff” and troops have been “thoroughly instructed” to protect civilians and medical facilities.
The regime’s forces, however, have repeatedly raided hospitals, which are granted special protection under the laws of war.
Their previous calls to evacuate hospitals, including Al-Shifa — the largest hospital in Gaza — have preceded military raids on the facilities.
Medics sounded the alarm at the hospital, with a doctor saying there was terror that Israeli forces would bombard or storm the complex.
“The situation is very difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult,” Dr. Abu Lehya wrote in a message on social media on Wednesday morning.
“It’s beyond the imagination or description.”
A nurse told APF that snipers are killing people in the hospital.
“It was a black night, with strikes and explosions all night,” said Mohammed al-Astal, a nurse in the emergency department.
“At night, tanks opened heavy fire on the hospital and snipers on the roofs of buildings surrounding Nasser hospital opened fire and killed three displaced people.”
Gaza hospitals have been overwhelmed by more than four months of Israel’s bombardment of the territory.
Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, is now the “backbone of the health system in southern Gaza,” according to World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said he was “alarmed” by reports from there.
Reports said the regime’s forces have destroyed warehouses filled with medical supplies, which the WHO said served hospitals in central and southern Gaza.
The agency’s envoy for the Palestinian territories, Rik Peeperkorn, described Nasser as “a key hospital for all of Gaza”.
“We cannot lose that hospital… this hospital is critically important.”
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) also said in a tweet on X that intense shelling was taking place in the vicinity of al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis on Wednesday.
The attacks resulted in material damage to the building, it said.
Khan Yunis has been the main target of Israel’s ground offensive that the regime says will soon be expanded to the overcrowded southernmost city of Rafah.
The border town of Rafah, once declared a “safe zone” by the regime, is currently home to more than half of the Gaza Strip’s population of 2.4 million, who have been forcibly displaced.
The regime’s military forces have already been bombarding the overcrowded city with airstrikes for weeks.
