Israel destroys evacuated health centre in Gaza City, Palestinian medical charity says

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

The Palestinian Medical Relief Society said an Israeli strike reduced the six-story 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.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Multiple hospitals in famine-stricken Gaza City have been forced to shut down as Israeli forces continue their ground operation.

Israel accuses Hamas of using medical facilities for military purposes, which could cause them to lose their protected status under international law, but the IDF has often provided scant to no evidence of a significant military presence.

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

"Attacks on health facilities must end. The senseless violence must stop. Ceasefire!" Tedros Ghebreyesus wrote in a post 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.

On Monday, several Western countries called on Israel to restore a medical corridor for Palestinians in Gaza to be treated in east Jerusalem and the West Bank and for Israel to lift restrictions on medical supplies entering the Strip.

The statement was signed by 24 nations, including Canada, France and Germany, and comes as Israel faces mounting criticism over the scale and humanitarian impact of the war in Gaza.

Israel launched a major new military offensive earlier this month aimed at occupying Gaza City, the territory’s largest settlement, 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 7 October 2023 incursion into southern Israel that triggered the current war.

Israel believes around 20 of the captives are still 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.

The war began when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people, most of them civilians.

Hamas took 251 people as hostages, but most of the captives have been released in previous ceasefires and other deals.

A subsequent Israeli offensive has to date killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry whose figures do not distinguish between fighters and civilians.

Its figures are seen by the UN and many independent experts as the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.