Israel destroys evacuated health centre in Gaza City, medics say

A Palestinian medical charity said that Israel has destroyed its main centre in Gaza City after ordering its evacuation.

The Palestinian Medical Relief Society said an Israeli strike reduced its six-storey building in the central Samer area to rubble.

It said the centre was one of the main facilities in the city providing blood donation and testing services, trauma care, cancer medicine and chronic disease treatment.

In a separate development, Israel announced on Tuesday the complete closure of the border crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan until further notice after an attack last week that killed two Israelis.

The Allenby Bridge Crossing over the Jordan River, also known as King Hussein Bridge, is the only cargo and passenger crossing available to Palestinians in the West Bank that does not lead to Israel. It is also on a key route for delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Multiple hospitals in the famine-stricken city have been forced to shut down as Israeli forces advance.

Israel accuses Hamas of using medical facilities for military purposes – which could cause them to lose their protection under international law – but the military has often provided little or no evidence of a significant militant presence.

The head of the World Health Organisation, which has partnered with the charity, condemned the strike.

“Attacks on health facilities must end. The senseless violence must stop. Ceasefire!” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.

The medical charity said another of its centres was damaged and surrounded by Israeli troops, and that a third centre was destroyed in a separate strike.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Monday that the Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital and the Specialised Eye Hospital had been forced to shut down because of nearby Israeli military operations.

Israel launched a major offensive earlier this month aimed at occupying Gaza City, the territory’s largest, which has already suffered heavy damage from previous raids and bombardment.

Israel says the operation is aimed at pressuring Hamas to surrender and return the remaining 48 hostages taken during its attack on October 7 2023 that triggered the war. Israel believes around 20 of the captives are alive.

The world’s leading authority on hunger crises said last month that Israel’s blockade and ongoing offensive had already pushed Gaza City into famine.

More than 300,000 people have fled the city in recent weeks as Israel has ordered the population to move south, but an estimated 700,000 remain, according to UN agencies and aid groups.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 in the October 7 attack. Most of the captives have since been released in ceasefires or other deals.

The Gaza Health Ministry says at least 65,382 Palestinians have been killed in the war, without saying how many were civilians or combatants. It is part of the Hamas-run government. Its figures are seen by the UN and many independent experts as the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.