Medics, patients and displaced people are fleeing from the main hospital in central Gaza as the fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants draws closer, witnesses said yesterday.
Losing the facility would be another major blow to a health system shattered by three months of war.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed an elite Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon, a Lebanese security official said, the latest in a series of escalating strikes between Israel and the militant group that have raised fears of a wider war.
Photo: Reuters
Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups withdrew from al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the past few days, saying it was too dangerous.
That spread panic among people sheltering there, causing many to join the hundreds of thousands who have fled to the south of the besieged territory.
Israel says it has largely wrapped up major operations in northern Gaza and is focusing on the central region and the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israeli officials have said the fighting would continue for many more months as the army seeks to dismantle Hamas and return scores of hostages taken during the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war.
The offensive has already killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, devastated vast swaths of the Gaza Strip, displaced nearly 85 percent of its population of 2.3 million and left one-quarter of its residents facing starvation.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was back in the region this week. The US, which has provided crucial military and diplomatic support for the offensive, has called on Israel to take greater measures to spare civilians, but has also joined it in rejecting international calls for a ceasefire.
Tens of thousands of people have sought shelter in Gaza’s hospitals, which are also struggling to treat dozens of people wounded each day in Israeli strikes.
Only 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are even partially functioning, the UN says.
Omar al-Darawi, an employee at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, said the facility has been struck multiple times in the past few days.
He said that thousands of people left after the aid groups pulled out, and that patients have been concentrated on one floor so the remaining doctors can tend to them more easily.
“We have large numbers of wounded who can’t move” he said. “They need special care, which is unavailable.”
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