At least 38 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in southern Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry says, as Israeli troops reportedly raided one of the last functioning hospitals in the north of the territory.
Rescue workers said nine children from one family were among those killed near the southern city of Khan Younis.
The ministry and medics also said Israeli troops had ordered patients and staff to leave Kamal Adwan hospital in the northern town of Beit Lahia, close to the besieged Jabalia area.
The Israeli military said it was checking the reports from Khan Younis and that forces were operating “in the area” of Kamal Adwan based on intelligence “regarding the presence of terrorists”.
Meanwhile, Jordan’s foreign minister warned that Israel was carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in northern Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians have reportedly been killed and tens of thousands displaced in recent weeks.
At least two residential buildings in the south-eastern al-Manara neighbourhood of Khan Younis were hit by Israeli air strikes around dawn on Friday, according to a spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency.
Fourteen people, including nine children, were killed when the home of the al-Fara family was hit, while six other people were killed in a second strike on a nearby home, Mahmoud Bassal said.
“The rocket fell next to us, and we were buried under the rubble. My children and sister were killed,” Umm al-Ameer al-Fara who survived told AFP news agency.
Ihsan al-Fara said her five-year-old son Issa was killed and that there had only been women and children in the house.
The Civil Defence posted a video that it said showed its rescue workers recovering the bodies of the children from the al-Faras’ home. The same children were also later photographed in body bags at the nearby European Gaza hospital.
Reuters news agency also said the bodies of another three children were brought to Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis.
The Gaza health ministry said a total of 38 people were killed in what it condemned as “several massacres” by the Israeli military.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, but on Friday morning it put out a statement saying that it had “eliminated several terrorists from the air and the ground and dismantled numerous terrorist infrastructures” over the past day.
Meanwhile in northern Gaza, the health ministry said Israeli forces had “stormed” Kamal Adwan hospital and were detaining the hundreds of patients, medical staff and displaced people inside.
“At midnight, the occupation army tanks and bulldozers reached the hospital. The terrorising of civilians, the injured and children began as [the Israeli forces] started opening fire on the hospital,” Eid Sabbah, the director of nursing, said in a voice note to Reuters.
He said the Israeli forces retreated when a delegation from the World Health Organization (WHO) arrived with an ambulance and evacuated 40 patients. However, tanks later returned to the surrounding area and opened fire at the hospital, hitting its oxygen stores, before troops began a raid and ordered staff and patients to leave, he added.
A video posted on social media also showed the hospital’s director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, speaking on the telephone while walking through a busy ward with what appeared to be two shattered windows and a damaged ceiling.
“Instead of receiving aid we receive tanks. Tanks that are shelling the building,” he says.
The WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the agency had lost touch with personnel at Kamal Adwan hospital.
“This development is deeply disturbing given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there,” he added.
He confirmed that the a WHO team had reached the hospital late on Thursday night “amid hostilities in the vicinity”, and transferred 23 patients and 26 caregivers to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. They also delivered units of blood, trauma and surgical supplies.
“Kamal Adwan Hospital has been overflowing with close to 200 patients – a constant stream of horrific trauma cases. It is also full of hundreds of people seeking shelter,” he added.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces were “operating in the area of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalia, based on intelligence information regarding the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area”.
“In the weeks preceding the operation, the [forces] facilitated the evacuation of patients from the area while maintaining emergency services,” it added.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi urged US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to put pressure on Israel over the deteriorating humanitarian situation and the mass displacement of civilians in northern Gaza.
“We look at northern Gaza and we do see ethnic cleansing taking place, and that has got to stop,” he said at the start of a meeting in London.
Many Palestinians believe the Israeli military is implementing out the so-called “Generals’ Plan” in the north, which would see the forced displacement of all of the estimated 400,000 civilians there to the south followed by a siege of any remaining Hamas fighters.
The Israeli military has denied having such a plan and said its offensive in Jabalia is to rout a Hamas resurgence.
Safadi also warned that the Middle East stood on the “brink of regional war”, adding that every time he met Blinken the situation was getting worse, “not for lack of us trying but because we do have an Israeli government that is not listening to anybody, and that has got to stop”.
“The only path to save the region from that is for Israel to stop the aggressions on Gaza, on Lebanon, stop unilateral measures, illegal measures in the West Bank, that is also pushing the situation to the abyss,” he stated.
Blinken is meeting Arab leaders and foreign ministers in the UK following a diplomatic tour of the Middle East.
The US is believed to be working on a plan for post-conflict Gaza, trying to get buy-in from Arab countries even though progress on a ceasefire and hostage deal for Gaza has been stalled for weeks.
Blinken said he was having important conversations “on ending the war in Gaza and charting a path for what comes next”. He also said there was a “sense of real urgency in getting a diplomatic resolution” to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
On Thursday, Israel said it would send the head of its Mossad intelligence agency to Doha on Sunday to meet the CIA director and Qatar’s prime minister amid renewed efforts to restart the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release talks.
It came after a Hamas delegation met Egyptian security officials in Cairo. Hamas said there had been no change in its conditions for a deal, which include the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
More than 42,840 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
