Gaza health officials say many patients, medical staff and the displaced on Saturday left Gaza’s largest hospital, which was taken over by Israeli forces earlier in the week.
Palestinian officials and the Israeli military offered conflicting versions about what prompted the mass exodus from Shifa Hospital.
Meantime, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.
Early in the war, the Israeli military told civilians to flee northern Gaza, the target of its ground offensive, but also kept up its bombardment in the southern evacuation zone where Khan Younis is located.
Israel has signalled plans to expand its offensive south while continuing operations in the north, including Gaza City, where troops were still searching the territory’s biggest hospital, Shifa, for traces of a Hamas command centre that Israel alleges was located under the building a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny.
Israel’s military has been urging the hospital to evacuate the several thousand people still there, and said on Saturday it had been asked by the hospital’s director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route.
But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.
The military said it did not order any evacuation, and added that medical personnel are being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.
