Medical Charity Agency Condemns Patient Evacuation Orders To Refugees At Gaza Hospital

JAKARTA - Medical charity Doctors Without Borders condemned an evacuation order issued by the Israeli military to staff, patients and refugees from Nasser Hospital in Gaza on Tuesday.

The organization's staff remained at the medical complex in Khan Younis on Wednesday to treat patients, "in the midst of nearly impossible conditions," the agency, also known as Mredecin's Sans Frontières (MSF), said in a statement.

There has been a fierce battle near Nasser Hospital for weeks, which has trapped staff, patients and refugees inside the medical complex with very few access to critical supplies, the MSF said.

"People are forced to be in an impossible situation: stay in Nasser's hospital without an Israeli military order and be a potential target, or get out of the complex into an apocalyptic landscape where bombings and evacuation orders are part of everyday life," said Lisaokiner, an MSF project coordinator in Gaza.

"Hospitals must be considered as safe places and should not even be evacuated," he said.

With the amount of damage that occurred in northern Gaza and the attacks that took place in the southern part of the trapped enclave, MSF said many people did not have a safe place to flee.

"People ask us, 'Where is it safe? Where do we have to go?', but there's no answer to that, and it really creates despair," saidesteriner.

Earlier, doctors and medical officials in Gaza said Israeli snipers shot dead a number of people who tried to leave Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Southern Gaza over the past few days.

A trauma surgeon at the hospital said he was an eye witness to the shooting and said at least two people were killed by snipers on Tuesday, with more being shot and injured.

In fact, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has ordered hospital staff and patients inside the medical complex to evacuate, saying it has "opened safe routes" for civilians to leave.

However, at least eight people who tried to escape along the route were shot on Tuesday, the surgeon said, who asked not to be named for security reasons.