Israeli forces have advanced further into southern Gaza’s main city, pounding areas near the territory’s biggest functioning hospital and sparking fears it could be forced to close due to Israeli bombardments and evacuation orders.
Khan Younis residents and medical staff said the fighting had come within metres of Nasser hospital, the biggest hospital still partially working in Gaza, over the past week. It has been receiving hundreds of wounded patients a day since the fighting shifted to the south last month.
Israeli officials have accused Hamas fighters of operating from Nasser hospital, which staff deny.
Two-thirds of Gaza’s hospitals have now ceased functioning and losing Nasser would further curtail the limited trauma care still available. Two other hospitals – al-Aqsa and the Gaza European – are also at risk of closure according to the UN.
In a statement on Thursday, Hamas denied claims aired by released Israeli hostage Sharon Aloni in an interview on CNN, that she and other prisoners had been detained in rooms in Nasser hospital.
The group said it “considers this to be in line with the lies of Israel and its old and new incitement against hospitals to justify its destruction of them”.
In November, Israeli forces stormed al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza and uncovered what it said were Hamas weapons and equipment found on the premises, though doubt was cast on this claim.
The aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday that heavy bombing by Israeli forces in recent days had sparked “panic among patients & displaced people seeking refuge there.” Thousands of people had sought shelter at the hospital after being advised to move south by the Israeli military earlier in the war.
Leo Cans, MSF head of mission for Palestine, said in a video recorded earlier this week that the fighting had come “very close” and that the situation at the hospital was “catastrophic”. He said an airstrike had struck 150 metres from the entrance to the hospital on Monday, killing eight and injuring 80.
“The wounded people that we take care of, many of them lost their legs, lost their arms,” he said. “There are really complex wounds that require a lot of surgery. And we don’t have the capacity to do this now.”
In its daily update on hostilities, the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said another Israeli airstrike had reportedly hit a building housing medical staff working for aid agencies at the hospital early on Thursday, injuring a number of people and forcing their evacuation.
“This reported attack and subsequent move of staff further compromise the already frail capacity in the over-congested hospital,” it said.
Residents of Khan Younis described heavy fighting and intense bombardment in the north and east of the city and, for the first time, in the west on Thursday, where they said tanks had advanced to carry out a raid before withdrawing.
“What is happening in Khan Younis now is complete madness: the occupation bombards the city in all directions, from the air and the ground too,” said Abu El-Abed. The 45-year-old now lives in Khan Younis after being displaced several times with his family of seven since leaving Gaza City in the north earlier in the war.
The Israeli military said a brigade in Khan Younis, now operating farther south than troops had ventured before, had “eliminated dozens of terrorists in close-quarters combat and with the assistance of tank fire and air support“. It said it had killed 60 fighters in the previous 24 hours, including 40 in Khan Younis. Its claims could not be verified.
Hundreds of thousands people fled to the city after Israel ordered civilians in the north to evacuate at the beginning of the war, and are now being forced to flee again. An estimated 1.7 million people of a total Gaza population of 2.2 million has been displaced.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed on Thursday that it had removed bodies from An Namsawi cemetery near Nasser hospital, after reports that the graveyard had been destroyed by tanks and graves emptied. The IDF told broadcaster CNN it had taken the bodies to identify whether any Israeli hostages were among them.
Footage also emerged on Thursday of Israeli troops blowing up the main campus of a university outside Gaza City in a controlled detonation – one of multiple universities they have destroyed.
The video, apparently taken by drone, showed a giant explosion engulfing the complex of buildings of al-Israa University.
The university, a private institution founded in 2014, said in a statement that its main building for graduate studies and bachelor’s colleges were destroyed. It said Israeli forces seized the complex 70 days ago and used it as a base. The Israeli army had no immediate comment.
OCHA said the explosion had taken place on Wednesday and said reports suggested it had “been used by the Israeli military as a military base and an ad hoc detention facility for interrogating Palestinian detainees before their transfer to an unknown location.”
US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing that Washington had “raised” the destruction of the university with Israel.
Elsewhere in Gaza, where a communications blackout entered a sixth day on Thursday hindering rescue and relief efforts, medics said an Israeli airstrike on a home killed 16 people, half of them children, in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
Reuters reported that the strike had wiped out a branch of the Zemeli family in the early hours of Thursday.
“Yesterday, I was playing with the children over there. They have all died,” 10-year-old nextdoor neighbour and cousin Mahmoud al-Zameli told the news wire. “I’m the only one still alive.”
A total of 24,620 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Gaza since Hamas’ 7 October attack on Israel – according to the territory’s health ministry – with thousands more thought to be buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings. Tens of thousands more have been wounded.
Israel blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas, saying the group fights in dense residential areas. Israel says its forces have killed roughly 9,000 militants, without providing evidence, and that 193 of its own soldiers have been killed since the Gaza ground offensive began.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday the war would take “many more months” and promised “total victory over Hamas”.
He also said he had told the Biden White House that he rejects any moves to establish a Palestinian state when Israel ends its offensive against Gaza, and that all territory west of the Jordan River would be under Israeli security control.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
