https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/middle-east-news/2023/11/19/al-shifa-exodus

Confusion as columns flee on foot from Gaza’s largest hospital

The New Daily and AAP
Nov 18, 2023, updated Nov 18, 2023

Staff and patients are reportedly leaving al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, with pictures showing columns of Palestinians fleeing on foot, some waving white flags.Photo: AAP

Staff and patients are reportedly leaving al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, with pictures showing columns of Palestinians fleeing on foot, some waving white flags.The director of the hospital said the Israeli military had ordered an evacuation but the IDF denied this, saying it helped people leave after the director requested it, reported BBC.

Palestinian officials accused the Israeli army of forcibly relocating most staff, patients and displaced people from Gaza’s largest hospital in the north and abandoning them to perilous journeys southwards on foot.

Israeli forces, which seized Al Shifa hospital in their offensive across north Gaza earlier this week, saying it concealed an underground Hamas command centre, denied the accusation and said all relocations were voluntary.

Meanwhile the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said on Saturday it had received “horrifying” images and footage of scores of people killed and wounded in an attack on an UNRWA school in the Israeli-occupied north.

“These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on social media platform X.

Israel’s military did not immediately comment and Reuters was unable to reach Gaza health officials for comment.

Death toll

Gaza health authorities raised their death toll on Friday to more than 12,000, including 5000 children.

The UN deems those figures credible although they are now updated only infrequently as war devastation has hampered communications.

Gaza humanitarian drive‘Immediate possibility of starvation’ in Gaza‘Immediate possibility of starvation’ in GazaAn Israeli offensive into south Gaza could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled the Israeli storming of Gaza City in the north to uproot again, along with residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, compounding a dire humanitarian crisis.

Southern escalationIsraeli air strikes on residential blocks in south Gaza have killed at least 47 Palestinians, medics say, after Israel again warned civilians to relocate as it girds for an onslaught against Hamas in the enclave’s south after subduing the north.

Israel vowed to annihilate the Hamas militant group that controls the tiny coastal enclave after its October 7 rampage into Israel in which its fighters killed 1200 people and dragged 240 hostages into the enclave, according to Israeli tallies.

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