News / Palestine

Patients forced out of Gaza’s European hospital after Israel's evacuation order

Tuesday, 02 July 2024 10:21 AM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 02 July 2024 10:55 AM ]

A man is transported on a hospital bed as displaced Palestinians leave an area in east Khan Yunis after the Israeli military issued a new evacuation order for parts of the city and Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on July 1, 2024. (Photo by AFP)

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says patients at the European hospital near Khan Yunis are being transferred to nearby medical centers following an Israeli evacuation order covering much of the Gaza Strip’s second-largest city.

The PRCS made the announcement on Tuesday, a day after the Israeli military ordered Palestinians in the eastern half of Khan Yunis and a large swath of Gaza’s south-eastern corner to leave.

The order suggested that the occupation troops are likely to launch a new ground assault in Khan Yunis.

Israeli forces fought for weeks in the southern Gaza city earlier this year but withdrew, claiming to have destroyed battalions of the Hamas resistance group there.

Jeremy Hickey, an anesthesiologist with the charity Fajr Scientific who was working at the European Hospital, told Al Jazeera TV news channel that staff were notified that the facility needed to evacuate.

Meanwhile, videos showed entire departments in the European hospital were being emptied, including areas housing patients and tents for the displaced Palestinians.

The evacuation zone is home to a water pipeline. It also covers an area surrounding the Kerem Shalom crossing, the major aid crossing to southern Gaza.

The United Nations Human Rights Office in Palestine said it was “extremely concerned” about the Khan Yunis evacuation, warning that it will “likely result in huge mass displacement, suffering, & family separation, all when the population is facing severe shortage of food, water, shelter & other basic necessities.”

Israel orders Palestinians to leave southern Gaza

Virtually every Palestinian in Gaza has been displaced multiple times since October 7, according to the UN.

Israel unleashed a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip on October 7 after Hamas carried out its historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed more than 37,900 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured over 87,060 others.

Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, with many displaced multiple times.

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