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The Israeli military has ordered thousands of people taking refuge in Gaza’s last big medical facility to leave after weeks of fighting around Nasser hospital brought Israeli troops to its gates.
Hundreds of displaced Palestinians on Wednesday began leaving the hospital at the southern edge of Khan Younis, carrying their few belongings. The Israel Defense Forces said the evacuation order did not apply to patients or staff.
Nasser is the last remaining large hospital in the Gaza Strip after the IDF besieged, then raided al-Shifa hospital in central Gaza, underneath which the Israeli military claimed to have found evidence of a tunnel complex used by Hamas militants.
In an audio message sent to the Financial Times by a nurse at the Nasser compound, women could be heard weeping over the sounds of distant gunfire and an Israeli military loudspeaker delivering instructions. The nurse, who declined to be identified, said evacuees — including the elderly and some wounded — were being held at a checkpoint.
Images on social media showed some evacuees running back to the hospital, with gunfire heard nearby. In messages that could not be independently verified, medical staff have in recent days said several people had been shot by snipers inside the compound.
Gaza’s health system is collapsing, the UN has said, with severe shortages of basic medical supplies and equipment. Medics have said they are being forced to carry out amputations without anaesthetic.
The World Health Organization estimates that only 11 hospitals are left partially functioning in Gaza, none of them as large as Nasser. About 22 have shut down, while three field hospitals in southern Gaza are operational.
The fighting had for weeks been moving closer to Nasser hospital, at the southern edge of the Khan Younis refugee camp, said Jacob Burns, a project co-ordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières, who worked at the hospital until early January.
Even then, he said, “conditions were very, very difficult, with a frequent influx of the wounded, coming to emergency rooms where there were no beds, and patients on the floor, and doctors working in difficult conditions”.
Gaza health authorities said as many as 10,000 people had taken refuge in the hospital in recent weeks, and remained there as the Israeli military carried out intense operations in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city. Many left in recent days as the fighting approached, making it difficult to estimate how many people were left in the hospital’s compound.
Israel ordered the evacuation of the zone behind the hospital in January, bringing the front line to within a kilometre of Nasser, with frequent shelling nearby. “We were already aware that because the fighting was so close, that the risks were enormous,” said Burns.
The IDF said in a statement on Wednesday that its troops “had opened a secure route to evacuate the civilian population taking shelter in the area of the Nasser hospital toward the humanitarian zone”. It declined to say where this zone was located.
“We emphasise that the IDF does not intend to evacuate patients and medical staff. The troops involved have been thoroughly instructed in advance to prioritise the safety of civilians, patients, medical workers and medical facilities during the operation,” it said.
The forced evacuation of people sheltering in other hospital complexes in Gaza has been followed by the IDF entering the compounds, and the removal of patients and staff under difficult and dangerous conditions.
It would be impossible to evacuate the patients in Nasser safely, said Burns. The remaining medical facilities in southern Gaza, to which most of Gaza’s 2.3mn population has been displaced, do not have the capacity to take many more patients.
“Nasser is the biggest hospital still working in the Gaza Strip,” he said. “The fighting has made access to the European Hospital [also in Khan Younis] too dangerous, and in Rafah, there are not enough beds even for the people already there.”
“To imagine that you can evacuate hundreds and hundreds of patients is just not possible,” he said.