Palestinian Red Crescent says IDF told Gaza City hospital to evacuate

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent says Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City received two calls from Israeli authorities demanding it evacuate.

A statement released by the organization says that the calls constituted a “clear and direct threat that the hospital must be evacuated at once, otherwise PRCS holds full responsibility for the lives of everyone inside the hospital.”

Spokesperson Nebal Farsakh says that 12,000 people are currently sheltering in the hospital.

She says the intensive care unit is predominantly occupied by children injured in the latest airstrikes.

“Most of them are connected to oxygen machines,” she says. “Evacuating them would be killing them.”

The Israeli military does not immediately comment.

The IDF has told some 1 million civilians to evacuate to the southern part of the Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground invasion.

The Israel Defense Forces on Friday said the Hamas terror group’s main base of operations is under Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, providing visuals and intercepted audio as evidence of the terror organization’s activities.

Gaza hospitals have been a key feature of the now three-week-long Gaza war, with Hamas on October 17 claiming that an Israeli strike targeted al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City and killed over 500 civilians. The claim was disproven within hours by Israeli and US intelligence, which found that the explosion occurred just outside the hospital, was caused by an errant Islamic Jihad rocket aimed at Israel and killed far fewer than 500 people.