Red Cross: 8,000 people have been evacuated from a hospital in Gaza

2024-02-06 17:03:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

About 8,000 displaced people have been evacuated from the besieged main hospital in the southern Gaza town of Han Yunis, where they had been sheltering, the Red Cross said on February 6.

"The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is beyond catastrophic," said Tommaso Della Longa, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

He told reporters in Geneva that the Red Cross has been told that Al-Amal hospital, which is run by the Palestinian Red Crescent, has been largely emptied after a long siege by Israeli forces.

"Eight thousand internally displaced people who were sheltered at our Palestinian Red Crescent hospital in Han Yunis... left the hospital yesterday," he explained.

He said Al-Amal hospital has been under siege for more than two weeks and there has been heavy fighting and shelling around it. The hospital has been hit by attacks several times, including on Friday last week, when a member of the Palestinian Red Crescent was killed.

About 100 elderly, injured and immobile patients are still inside the hospital, along with about 100 staff and volunteers, the Red Cross said.

Even before the evacuation, Al-Amal hospital was facing major challenges, including severe shortages of medicine, food and water, Della Longa said.

Israel is continuing its offensive in the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians. The war was sparked on October 7 after Hamas - the Palestinian group designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union - attacked southern Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people and kidnapping nearly 250 others.

The Ministry of Health in Hamas-controlled Gaza said the situation at Nasser Hospital, which is located near Al-Amal, is also alarming.

Hospitals - which are protected under international humanitarian law - have been hit repeatedly during the war in Gaza. The Israeli military has accused Hamas of using health facilities as command centers, allegations denied by the radical Palestinian group.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza, led by Hamas, has reported over 27,000 people killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, since the war began in early October 2023./ REL