Patients and doctors evacuated for the European hospital in Gaza

Patients continued to be evacuated from a hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Tuesday, after an overnight strike hit a home nearby and killed 9 people inside the zone that Israel said should be evacuated.

An official at the European Hospital said most patients and medics at the facility had been relocated.

Patients were seen outstretched on hospital beds outside waiting for their evacuation.

The head of the emergency unit at the hospital Abdallah Hamdan said that patients were being evacuated and equipment was being moved to Nasser Hospital.

The European Hospital was no longer functional, Hamdan said.

Sam Rose, the director of planning at the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said Tuesday that the agency believes some 250,000 people are in the evacuation zone — over 10% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million — including many who have fled earlier fighting.

He said another 50,000 people living just outside the zone may also choose to leave because of their proximity to the fighting.

Evacuees have been told to seek refuge in a sprawling tent camp along the coast that is already overcrowded and has few basic services.

Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.

Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 37,900 people in Gaza, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

The war has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and basic goods to Gaza, and people there are now totally dependent on aid.

The top U.N. court has concluded there is a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza — a charge Israel strongly denies.