The Israeli army begins to evacuate the main operating hospital in Gaza

After surrounding it for a week, the Israeli army began this Tuesday to evacuate Al Naser, the main operational hospital in Gaza, in the city of Khan Younis.

In the images recorded from its surroundings you can see hundreds of people abandoning it in a group with their few belongings - and some, with white flags - after the troops warned, through loudspeakers and drones, of their determination to take it.

The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has expressed himself “alarmed” by the situation in Al Naser, which he has defined as the “backbone of the health system in southern Gaza.” where the vast majority of Gazans are concentrated after their forced displacement from the north.

In a message on the social network two missions in the last four days.

The Israeli army emphasizes that “it does not intend to evacuate patients and medical personnel” and that it has opened a “safe route” for displaced people towards the “humanitarian zone.”

The spokesman for the Ministry of Health of the Hamas Government in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qudra, has accused the Armed Forces of “forcing thousands of displaced people, families of medical personnel and patients who cannot move” to leave the center, despite to “be threatened by extreme danger.”

Like any standing institution of a certain size, the hospital has become an improvised shelter for displaced people.

The estimated thousands of people inside have spent the last few days in fear of the tanks and riflemen stationed nearby.

According to the health authorities of the strip, at least three civilians have been killed.

The NGO Doctors Without Borders, which has local staff there, reported at the end of January that some 300 patients remained in the hospital without being able to be evacuated, due to a lack of ambulances and the danger it entailed.

It is a situation similar to that experienced in November at the Al Shifa hospital in the capital, under which Israel located a Hamas command and operations center that it did not find.

In the images broadcast in recent days by Al Jazeera television, you can see a Palestinian with his hands handcuffed entering the hospital to try to convince of the need to evacuate it, a body lying in the surroundings and a group of Palestinians passing jerrycans of water with a cart for fear of crossing the street that leads to the hospital.

“Intense bombing”

The Palestinian Red Crescent also reported this Tuesday "intense shelling" in the surroundings of another hospital in Khan Yunis, Al Amal, which has been damaged.

He had previously reported the arrest of nine members of his staff there and that soldiers broke medical equipment and took laptop computers in the raid.

The Israeli army believes that the medical centers hide access to the underground network of tunnels used by the militants.

In the network - which is dynamiting or flooding with water from the Mediterranean Sea - he hopes to find some of the 134 hostages (at least 31 of them dead) who remain in Gaza, after the rescue this Tuesday of two of them, with dual nationality. Argentina and Israel.

Or Yahia Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza whose assassination (“He is a dead man,” several Israeli leaders said after the massive attack on October 7) would give a symbolic “victory photo” to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after more than four months of war.

This Monday, the Israeli Armed Forces released a video in which Sinwar appears.

He is the first since the start of the war.

He was recorded in the early days and is seen from behind, moving through a tunnel with his wife and children.

That same day, the head of Israel's secret services met in Cairo with Qatari, Egyptian and American mediators to negotiate the exchange of hostages for the release of Palestinian prisoners and a ceasefire of at least six weeks.

For now, he won't be back.

This Tuesday, Netanyahu ordered the delegation to stay in Israel because he “did not receive any new proposal from Hamas” in Cairo compared to last week.

Hamas then proposed negotiating a definitive end to the war during 135 days of ceasefire in which up to 1,500 Palestinian prisoners would regain freedom in exchange for the gradual handover of all the hostages.

The Israeli Prime Minister rejected it outright and described it again this Tuesday as “delusional.”

“A change in Hamas's positions will allow the negotiations to move forward,” he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the daily skirmishes between Israel and militias in Lebanon have escalated one notch this Tuesday.

In the morning, a barrage of rockets launched from Lebanon killed a soldier and injured eight others at a military base.

The attack is not only unusual because most of the projectiles seem to be aimed at unpopulated areas, to avoid escalation, but also because it hit a military base in the city of Safed, which has not been evacuated and is 14 kilometers from the border. .

No armed group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Israeli army has reacted with a series of bombings, also less near the border, in which it has killed at least four people: two children, a woman and a Hezbollah militiaman.

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