Hundreds of sick patients, medics flee Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after Israeli evacuation order

Men, women and children began to flee the Aqsa Martyrs Hospital on Sunday afternoon. Some were intubated, carrying bags of fluid with them as they walked. Others were visibly nursing serious injuries, with family members or friends carrying them on stretchers or providing them assistance to leave the premises on foot.

The evacuation of the hospital and its environs continued over Sunday night and into Monday morning in response to a Sunday order issued by the Occupation military to vacate the area for more fighting.

Fleeing the area, many told Mada Masr they would move toward the coast, joining more than a million people — most of whom have been displaced multiple times over the ten-month war — crammed into an even smaller area on the western coastline of Gaza by a sequence of evacuation orders the Israeli military has issued over recent weeks.

Thousands of displaced people as well as doctors and patients in intensive care were taking shelter in and around Aqsa Martyrs when the Israeli military issued an order on Sunday afternoon, ordering the immediate evacuation of “Block 128,” an area in Deir al-Balah, and directing residents to check whether they were included in a small area highlighted on a map issued by the military as adjacent to the Salah Eddin road.

The Israeli military spokesperson added that the area is now “a dangerous combat zone,” saying that “the IDF will act forcefully against Hamas and the terrorist organizations in your area.”

For people on the ground, it was not clear whether or not the hospital was included in the specified area. In a statement circulated to journalists on Sunday afternoon, the government media office in the strip affirmed that “the hospital is not in the red area designated [for evacuation] by the Occupation.”

In the hours following the evacuation order, however, an explosion took place just 250 meters away from the hospital, said Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF), who have a medical presence in the hospital's intensive care unit. The group said it “triggered panic, with many choosing to leave the hospital.”

A man named Rabei leaving the area on foot on Sunday evening along with members of his family told Mada Masr that “they gave a sudden evacuation order for Block 128, the area they said was safe.”

Another man, taking care of an injured young boy in front of the hospital entrance said, “we were ordered to evacuate the hospital.” He said he did not know where they would go, noting that no ambulances were available as they had also left the area. 

A Mada Masr correspondent said the hospital wards were evacuated completely with the exception of medics in the emergency department, who remained present for urgent care only. “From around 650 patients, only 100 remain in the hospital,” said MSF in the early hours of Monday morning.

Many of those leaving the area told a Mada Masr correspondent that they didn’t know exactly where they were going but planned to walk roughly in the direction of central Gaza’s coastline, near Mawasi, an increasingly crowded few square kilometers where over a million Palestinians from Gaza are taking shelter. “We are going down to the sea,” Naema Hamed said while carrying her belongings wrapped in a red blanket. Rabea, who said he was carrying only buckets of water with him to guard against thirst, said he didn’t know where he and his family could go, so they were heading temporarily toward the sea.

In a series of evacuation orders forcing people to move further into central and western areas of the strip in recent weeks, the Israeli military has emptied neighborhoods in the southern Khan Younis and central Gaza.

Nearly 84 percent of the Gaza Strip’s residents have been displaced by evacuation orders, according to recent reporting from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which noted that the millions of displaced residents are now crowded into a designated  “humanitarian area” in Mawasi, which has been reduced to just 46 square kilometers, down from 58.9 square kilometers in early 2024.