News - Palestinian Red Crescent: Israel demands evacuation of Gaza hospital

A Palestinian Red Crescent Spokesperson said Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City received two calls from Israeli authorities demanding evacuation.A statement released by the organization said the calls posed a "clear and direct threat to the immediate evacuation of the hospital, otherwise the Red Crescent bears full responsibility for the lives of everyone in the hospital," Times of Israel reports.Spokesperson Nebal Farsakh said the hospital was currently sheltering 12,000 people. According to her, the intensive care unit mainly houses children injured as a result of the latest airstrikes.“Most of them are hooked up to oxygen machines,” she says. “Evacuating them will kill them.”The Israeli military has not yet commented on the situation.The Israel Defense Forces has ordered approximately 1 million civilians to evacuate to the southern Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground invasion.According to the IDF, the main base for the leadership of Hamas operations is located under the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The military provided visual and intercepted audio recordings as evidence of the activities of this circumstance.Hospitals in the Gaza Strip have become a key aspect of the three-week-long war in Gaza: On October 17, Hamas said an Israeli strike on Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City had killed more than 500 civilians. That claim was refuted within hours by Israeli and US intelligence, which determined that the explosion, near the hospital, was caused by a misguided Islamic Jihad missile aimed at Israel and killed far fewer than 500 people. To be more precise, according to some estimates, less than fifty.