Israeli troops surrounded the Nasser Hospital complex in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis last night, according to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas’ health ministry and eyewitnesses.

Dozens of armored personnel carriers and tanks were deployed in the area since morning, according to eyewitnesses, who spoke of gunfire.

“The (Israeli) army is besieging the Nasser Hospital complex,” the health ministry said in a statement, citing operations around it in preparation for “an attack against the health, technical and administrative staff and the thousands of displaced which are still present inside’.

Tank movements around the compound had already been reported on Sunday by the Palestinian Red Crescent.

When asked for comment by AFP, the Israeli military did not respond.

Since the outbreak of war between Israel’s army and Hamas on October 7, sparking an unprecedented offensive by the Palestinian Islamist movement in southern sectors of Israeli territory, Israeli forces have frequently carried out operations at hospitals in the Gaza Strip, claiming they are looking for Palestinian fighters. .

A similar operation began on March 18 around and inside Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the enclave’s largest, where Israel’s military said 170 Palestinian militant “combatants” had been killed.

In Khan Younis, al-Amal Hospital, about a kilometer from the comparatively smaller Nasser, has also been targeted since Sunday. It is now “defunct”, it has “ceased to function completely”, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported yesterday, as the Israeli army removed those who were there and blocked the entrances with debris.

The aid organization, in a statement, highlighted the fact that “the international community is not providing the necessary protection” to its groups, the sick and injured and the forcibly displaced.

According to the same source, two people were killed by bullets, a patient and her volunteer, on Sunday, during a transfer. Asked about it, Israel’s military did not provide any information about the incident.

In a statement made public yesterday Tuesday night simultaneously in Geneva and Beirut, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (FRESC) emphasized that “the suspension of most hospitals in the North (of the Gaza Strip) due to acute fuel shortages , the absence of medicines and medical equipment and the lack of safe access was devastating.”

“The forced closure of al-Amal hospital, one of the few remaining medical facilities in the south, has profound consequences, putting countless lives at risk,” the text added.

DOCES “calls on all parties to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law, guaranteeing the protection of civilians, health personnel and health facilities”.

The al-Quds hospital in Gaza City suffered the same fate in November, according to the Red Crescent, which counts fifteen of its members dead since the outbreak of the Israel/Hamas war and calls “the international community responsible for the complete collapse of the health system.” in the enclave, by virtue of the 4th Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.