Key events
Israel orders closure of one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza
Hello, and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and developments in the Middle East more widely.
Israel late last night ordered the closure and evacuation of one of the last hospitals still partly functioning in northern Gaza.
The head of the Kamal Adwan hospital, Husam Abu Safiya, told Reuters that obeying the order to shut down was “next to impossible” because there were not enough ambulances to get patients out.
He said:
We currently have nearly 400 civilians inside the hospital, including babies in the neonatal unit, whose lives depend on oxygen and incubators. We cannot evacuate these patients safely without assistance, equipment, and time.
We are sending this message under heavy bombardment and direct targeting of the fuel tanks, which if hit will cause a large explosion and mass casualties of the civilians inside.
Abu Safiya said the military had ordered patients and staff to be evacuated to another hospital where conditions are even worse. The Israeli military said that on Friday it had sent fuel and food to the hospital and helped evacuate more than 100 patients and caregivers to other Gaza hospitals.
Gaza’s health ministry has said the three main hospitals in northern Gaza – of which Kamal Adwan is one – are barely functioning and have been under repeated attack since Israel sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and nearby Beit Hanoun and Jabalia in October. The Israeli military claims the aim of the renewed assault on the north is to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping there. But the IDF has attacked hospitals and shelters, with many civilians being killed by Israeli forces amid relentless attacks.
In other developments:
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Israeli forces have carried out three consecutive attacks overnight on the Gaza Strip, killing at least 11 Palestinians, according to Al Jazeera, which said the military killed four people in two separate air raids in the so-called designated “safe zone” of al-Mawasi. Palestinian news agency Wafa is reporting that four Palestinian people were killed and three others injured after Israel bombed the new camp area northwest of the al-Nuseirat refugee camp.
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The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), Phillipe Lazzarani, said there has been in “escalation” in attacks over the past day, with more civlians reported killed and injured. In a post on X, he wrote: “Attacks on schools and hospitals have been commonplace. The world must not become numb.”
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Jordan’s foreign minister Ayman Safadi is due to meet with Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, and “several Syrian officials”, later today in Damascus, Jordan’s foreign ministry said. Al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, led the Sunni Islamist rebels who swept into the Syrian capital earlier this month and forced Bashar-al Assad from power.
