RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Dispatches) — Palestinians have begun evacuating the main hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, according to videos shared by medics on Wednesday. Weeks of heavy bombardment by the Zionist regime had isolated the medical facility and claimed the lives of several people inside it.
The Israeli genocidal onslaught, now in its fifth month, has devastated Gaza’s health sector, with less than half of its hospitals even partially functioning as scores of people are martyred and wounded in daily bombardments.
Khan Younis is the main target of a rolling ground invasion that Israel has said will soon be expanded to Gaza’ southernmost city of Rafah. Some 1.4 million people — over half the territory’s population — are crammed into tent camps and overflowing apartments and shelters in the town on the Egyptian border.
Ceasefire negotiators held talks in Cairo on Tuesday that were attended by CIA chief William Burns and David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, but there were no signs of a breakthrough. Israeli media reported on Wednesday that the occupying regime’s extremist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his delegation not to return to the talks unless Hamas softens its demands.
Netanyahu has vowed to continue the invasion until the return of all captives held in Gaza.
Hamas has said it will not release all the captives until Israel ends its invasion, withdraws from Gaza and releases a large number of Palestinian prisoners.
In northern occupied territories, meanwhile, a rocket attack wounded at least eight Zionists on Wednesday when one of the projectiles hit a home in the town of Safed. Israeli media reported that a woman soldier was killed in the attack.
The Israeli military announced on Wednesday that 15 soldiers were wounded in the last 24 hours. One of them has been described as being in a serious condition, Haaretz reported.
Israel carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon in response, martyring four people, including a Syrian woman and her two Lebanese children, and wounding at least nine, Lebanese security officials and local media said.
Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which supports Hamas, have traded fire along the Lebanese border nearly every day since the start of the war on Gaza, raising the risk of a wider conflict.
The videos of the evacuation in Khan Younis showed dozens of Palestinians carrying their belongings in sacks and making their way out of the Nasser Hospital complex. A doctor wearing green hospital scrubs walked ahead of the crowd, some of whom were carrying white flags.
The Zionist military had ordered the evacuation of the hospital and surrounding areas last month. But as with other health facilities,
 medics said patients were unable to safely leave or be relocated, and thousands of people displaced by fighting elsewhere remained there. Palestinians say nowhere is safe in the besieged territory, as Israel continues to carry out strikes in all parts of it.
The Gaza Health Ministry said last week that Israeli snipers on surrounding buildings were preventing people from entering or leaving the hospital. It said 10 people have been martyred inside the complex over the past week, including three shot and killed on Tuesday.
The ministry says around 300 medical staff were treating some 450 patients, including people wounded in strikes. It says 10,000 displaced people were sheltering in the facility.
At least 28,576 Palestinians have been martyred, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
That includes over 100 bodies brought to hospitals in the last 24 hours. Over 68,000 people have been wounded in the war, including around 11,000 in need of evacuation for urgent treatment, according to the ministry.
Around 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, large areas in northern Gaza have been completely destroyed and a humanitarian crisis has left a quarter of the population starving.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said on Wednesday that Zionist forces are currently shelling the vicinity of the Al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis.
The organization added that the shelling has damaged the hospital building.
The prime ministers of Spain and Ireland asked the European Commission to urgently review whether Israel is complying with its human rights obligations in Gaza.
The two leaders said attacking Rafah posed “a grave and imminent threat that the international community must urgently confront”.
A Spanish government source said it was confident that European countries are unifying around a firmer position and for the European Commission to take more concrete action over the Zionist regime’s invasion of Gaza.