Hospital in central Gaza empties out as Israeli forces draw near (2024)

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — One of Gaza's last functioning hospitals has been emptying out in recent days as Israel ordered the evacuation of nearby areas and signaled a possible ground operation in a town that was largely spared throughout the war, officials said Monday.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah is the main hospital serving central Gaza. The Israeli military did not order its evacuation, but patients and people sheltering there fear it could be engulfed in fighting or become the target of a raid.

Also on Monday, Israeli strikes in Gaza City and Khan Younis killed at least 19 people, according to local officials, and fighting between Israel and Hezbollah resumed across the Lebanon border.

Israeli forces invaded several hospitals in Gaza over the course of the 10-month-old war, accusing Hamas of using them for military purposes, allegations denied by Palestinian health officials.

Israeli evacuation orders now cover about 84% of Gaza's territory, according to the United Nations, which estimates that about 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million were forced from their homes. Many have been displaced multiple times.

The evacuation orders reduced the size of the humanitarian zone declared by Israel at the start of the war while crowding more Palestinians into it. Thousands of Palestinian families have packed into tent camps along the beach where aid groups say food and clean water are scarce and disease spreads quickly.

The most recent satellite images available from PlanetLabs analyzed by The Associated Press show the increase in tent density along the beachfront since July 19.

AP reporters saw people fleeing the hospital and surrounding areas on Monday, many on foot. Some pushed patients on stretchers or carried sick children, while others held bags of clothes, mattresses and blankets. Four schools in the area were also evacuated.

"Where will we get medicine?" Adliyeh al-Najjar said as she rested outside the hospital gate. "Where will patients like me go?"

Fatimah al-Attar fought back tears as she left the hospital compound heading in the direction of the tent camps.

"Our fate is to die," she said. "There is no place for us to go. There is no safe place."

The U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs known as OCHA said since Friday the Israeli military issued three evacuation orders for more than 19 neighborhoods in northern Gaza and in Deir al Balah, affecting more than 8,000 people staying in these areas.

The order covers an area including or near UN and other humanitarian centers, the Al Aqsa hospital, two clinics, three wells, one water reservoir and one desalination plant, said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for OCHA.

"This effectively upends a whole lifesaving humanitarian hub," Laerke said.

Doctors Without Borders, an international charity known by its French acronym MSF, said an explosion about 250 yards from the hospital on Sunday caused panic, accelerating the exodus.

"As a result, MSF is considering whether to suspend wound care for the time being, while trying to maintain life-saving treatment," it said on social media.

The hospital said it was treating more than 600 patients before the evacuation orders, which apply to residential areas less than a mile away. About 100 patients remain, including seven in intensive care and eight in the children's ward.

Israel's military said Monday its forces expanded operations on the outskirts of Deir al-Balah. Officials claimed to discover weapons in a residential apartment and dismantle an underground Hamas tunnel more than 700 yards long long.

Local health officials said an Israeli airstrike hit a group of people on the seashore in Gaza City, killing at least seven men while they were fishing.

Another strike hit a vehicle inside the Israeli-declared humanitarian zone near the southern city of Khan Younis, killing at least five people, according to a Kuwaiti field hospital, where the bodies were taken.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those attacks.

Monday night, a strike hit a house in Maghazi, a refugee camp near Deir al-Balah, and killed at least seven people, including four children and a woman, according to hospital records and AP journalists who counted the bodies. Ambulances recovered the bodies that were taken to Al Aqsa hospital.

The war began with a Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. The fighting killed about 1,200 people and militants took about 250 hostages.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, and caused heavy destruction across much of the territory. Hamas is still holding about 110 hostages, about a third of whom are believed to be dead, after most of the rest were freed in a cease-fire last year.

Israel has continued carrying out strikes across Gaza as the United States, Egypt and Qatar have tried to broker a lasting cease-fire and the release of the remaining hostages. Major gaps remain despite several months of high-level negotiations.