Israeli military orders evacuation of Nasser hospital, hundreds of doctors, patients remain in besieged facility

Crowds of displaced people left the Nasser Medical Complex amid plumes of smoke and the sound of rapid gunfire after Occupation forces began to order the evacuation of the facility on Tuesday night.

Hundreds of doctors and patients meanwhile, remain fearful and isolated inside the hospital.

“The situation is currently very bad. Quadcopter drones and Occupation military vehicles with loudspeakers ordered the displaced to evacuate the complex,” said Dr. Mohamed al-Qidra, an emergency physician who spoke to Mada Masr from the hospital on Wednesday.

The Nasser complex, the second biggest hospital in the Gaza Strip, is already under extreme pressure after a siege of over 20 days. Bombing has pounded the hospital’s vicinity and snipers have shot at people in surrounding streets, according to reports.

“Medical staff and those injured were ordered to stay inside the hospital until further notice, at least for now,” said Qidra, estimating that around 600 to 700 injured people are still at the facility. Another doctor, Ahmed Smire, an anesthesiologist in the complex’s operations department, put the number of those injured at around 400.

Occupation forces ordered the injured and medical staff to stay inside, allowing only one caretaker for each injured person, Qidra added.

Occupation forces claimed on Tuesday that Hamas is conducting “military activities within Nasser hospital” and has held Israeli prisoners there. “In the meantime, we call for the evacuation of civilians seeking shelter from the hospital grounds,” according to an Occupation military statement.

Thousands of people displaced from their homes in Gaza amid the ongoing aggression had taken shelter within the complex.

“The number of injured in the hospital [before evacuation orders] was nearly 6,000 to 7,000 displaced people in Nasser Medical Complex, and maybe more. Maybe even from 8,000 to 9,000. There is no way to determine the exact number,” Smire said.

The Israeli Defense Forces said on Tuesday night that it would evacuate the displaced from Nasser hospital to the so-called “safe zones” in the coastal Mawasi region and Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

Qidra and Smire, however, described the IDF evacuating some people on Wednesday by foot via a designated “safe passage” on Gamal Abdel Nasser Street to Tal al-Sultan in Rafah.

Speaking to Mada Masr from inside the Nasser Hospital, Smire said it was hard to tell what was happening during the evacuation, given the distance between the safe passage and the facility. He described seeing Occupation checkpoints set up to inspect men.

Some of the displaced people are disabled and elderly, requiring wheelchairs and therefore cannot exit via the designated evacuation path, Smire added. He said these people have stayed in the hospital, not knowing what to do.

Designated “safe corridors” used for evacuation during the 131 days of Israel’s aggression on Gaza have been subject to bombardment, shelling, and sniper fire, the United Nations has said.

With vulnerable people still in need of care at the hospital, many fear that Occupation forces could soon conduct a raid on the facility.

Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, announced through Telegram on Wednesday afternoon that the UN had informed the group that Israeli forces said they are planning to storm the Nasser Medical Complex.

The IDF also said on Tuesday that it could escalate soon. “We demand the immediate cessation of all military activity in the area of the hospital and the immediate departure of military operatives from it. If Hamas does not stop this terrorist activity, within 12 hours, the IDF reserves its right to act against these actions,” said the IDF media center in a Tuesday evening statement.

Naim described the assault as a repeat of the Shifa Hospital “massacre.” A November military raid on the Shifa Medical Complex saw Israeli troops storm the Gaza City facility with tanks and bulldozers, killing, injuring, and detaining a number of medical staff and displaced and wounded people under the pretext of looking for Hamas tunnels beneath the hospital. 

Patients and doctors now remain isolated and surrounded in the Nasser hospital, fearing for their fate after weeks under siege at the facility.

“There are martyrs inside the complex and in its vicinity but no one can come close to them because of the snipers. They have been at the gates of Nasser complex for more than four or five days, ” Qidra told Mada Masr on Wednesday.

“A lot of the displaced people and medical personnel there were killed by snipers, not to mention Israel’s denial of any supplies to the hospital crew,” Naim said on Telegram.

Israeli snipers killed three people and injured 10 others inside the medical complex on Tuesday, the spokesperson for the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said. One of those directly targeted and killed was a child, according to Palestinian outlets, describing fires erupting in nearby schools due to uninterrupted power cuts.

Several humanitarian organizations expressed concern, including Doctors Without Borders, who took to X on Tuesday, calling on Israeli forces to “ensure that all medical staff, patients and displaced people are unharmed.”

In Hamas’ official statement, Naeem called for “international urgent intervention to stop these massacres,” which he added are not for the benefit of any deescalation plans.

The operation at the hospital is part of a broader campaign launched in January, in which the IDF has launched airstrikes and artillery attacks on Khan Younis, a city in Gaza’s south. Israel has also conducted ground operations, clashing with resistance factions in southern and western areas of the city.

Thousands of Palestinians have been pushed out of Khan Younis and forced to flee farther south to Rafah, further crowding the area on the Egyptian border, which is already sheltering nearly 1.4 million displaced Gazans.

The escalation on the hospital comes amid growing fear that Israel could soon launch a ground operation on Gaza's southernmost city, Rafah. The threat has prompted an outcry about the potential killing of hundreds of thousands in the crowded area, where over 1.4 million displaced people are taking shelter.

Some have already begun to flee northward again in what sources described to Mada Masr as “reverse displacement.”

The UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, also expressed concern over the horrific situation in Gaza, reiterating calls for “a humanitarian ceasefire, full compliance with international law and prioritization of protection of civilians and for the intensification of diplomatic efforts to put an end to this crisis.”

Meanwhile, negotiations for another truce and a prisoner-exchange deal continued for a second day in Cairo on Wednesday. The talks were initiated in December by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.