At least 30 killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza - reports

Israeli forces have withdrawn from a hospital complex in northern Gaza, one day after storming it, as the Palestinian official news agency WAFA said at least 30 people were killed in Israeli strikes on several houses in northern Gaza's Beit Lahiya.

Gaza's health ministry said Israeli troops had detained dozens of male medical staffers and some of the patients at the hospital complex.

Health officials said yesterday that Israeli forces had stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of three medical facilities struggling to operate in the area.

Footage circulated by the health ministry showed damage to several buildings after the Israeli forces withdrew.

Medics said at least 44 of the facility's 70-member team of the hospital had been detained by the army.

It later said the army had released 14 of them, including the hospital's director.

An Israeli military spokesperson declined to comment on the hospital report.

Yesterday, the Israeli military said it operated in the area of the hospital based on intelligence "regarding the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure" there.

Medics said at least two children had died inside the intensive care unit after Israeli fire hit the generators and oxygen station in the facility yesterday.

Medical staffers have refused Israeli army orders to evacuate the hospital or leave their patients unattended.

Before the army raid, medics said at least 600 people had been in the hospital, including patients and their escorts.

"The safety and lives of patients who are left inside Kamal Adwan Hospital without medical staff and much needed medication are at risk now," said Marwan Al-Hams of the health ministry.

Israeli military strikes on the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza have so far killed around 800 people during a three-week offensive, the Gaza ministry added.

Israel says its forces returned to northern Gaza to root out Hamas fighters who regrouped there. The Israeli military said on Friday that three of its soldiers were killed in combat in the north of the Gaza Strip.

WHO calls for hospitals to be protected

Earlier, the World Health Organization chief warned of a disastrous situation in the north of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, with "intensive military operations unfolding around and within healthcare facilities".

"The situation in northern Gaza is catastrophic," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X, warning that "a critical shortage of medical supplies, compounded by severely limited access, are depriving people of life saving care".

He pointed in particular to the situation at Kamal Adwan, northern Gaza's last functioning hospital, which was stormed by Israeli forces yesterday, according to Gaza's health ministry.

The ministry charged that the raid on the facility in the Jabalia camp, where Israel launched a major operation earlier this month, left two children dead.

And it accused the Israeli forces of detaining hundreds of staff, patients and displaced people during the raid.

The Israeli military said its forces were operating around Kamal Adwan, but was "not aware of live fire and strikes in the area of the hospital".

Mr Tedros said that the Gaza health ministry had informed WHO, which had temporarily lost contact with its staff at the hospital amid the chaos, that the siege had ended.

"But it came at a heavy cost," he said.