Hundreds flee Gaza hospital on foot

Al-Shifa’s director claims the Israeli army ordered the evacuation.

Hundreds of people evacuated Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital on foot Saturday, an Agency France-Presse journalist at the scene saw, after the hospital director said the Israeli army ordered the hospital emptied.

Columns of sick and injured — some of them amputees — displaced people, doctors and nurses, made their way towards the seafront.

The Hamas-run health ministry of the Palestinian enclave said in a statement that 120 wounded were still at the Al-Shifa, along with an unspecified number of premature babies, adding it was in touch with the Red Cross about the infants.

Officials said a few medical staff stayed behind to care for those who could not be moved.

Hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya told AFP Israeli troops instructed him to ensure “the evacuation of patients, wounded, the displaced and medical staff, and that they should move on foot towards the seafront.”

Israel’s army, however, denied ordering the evacuation.

The army “acceded to the request of the director of the Shifa Hospital to enable additional Gazans who were in the hospital, and would like to evacuate, to do so” an army statement said, AFP reported.

The United Nations estimated 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering at Al-Shifa before Israeli troops moved in on Wednesday, AFP said.

The evacuation order was issued through loudspeakers, an AFP journalist at the scene reported, as troops combed the facility for Hamas hideouts.

Al-Shifa hospital — Gaza’s biggest — has become the focus of the Israel-Hamas war, now entering its seventh week after the 7 October attacks on southern Israel.

Israel claims Hamas operates a base underneath Al-Shifa, a charge the militants deny.

Israel has made repeated calls for the hospital to be evacuated to the south, but however medical professionals say the patients cannot be moved.

AHMAD MAHDI/GENCE FRANCE-PRESSE PEOPLE gather at Piazza del Popolo in Rome, Italy during a national day of strike called by two of the country’s largest unions, which say the tax-cutting budget woefully underfunds key sectors such as health, education and industry. Opposition parties accused Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government of using the budget to chase votes ahead of next year’s European Parliament elections at the expense of workers and pensioners.