Civilians flee main Gaza hospital on foot
BBC updates:
Hundreds of people have been leaving al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City - the site that Israeli forces have been searching for days.
Pictures show columns of Palestinians fleeing on foot, some waving white flags.
A journalist among those leaving the hospital said there were gunfire and explosions overnight, and that bulldozers had dug huge holes in the hospital yard.
The hospital director said the Israeli military had ordered an evacuation but the IDF denied this, saying it helped people leave after the director requested it.
The Hamas-run health ministry says 120 patients remain at the hospital, along with premature babies.
Israel accuses Hamas of running a command centre under the hospital - it has shown pictures of an alleged tunnel shaft and weapons as evidence so far.
Reports from elsewhere in northern Gaza say a UN school used as a shelter has been hit - Israel says it's investigating the claims.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 12,000 people have been killed in the territory since Israel began its campaign against Hamas.
It began heavily bombing the Gaza Strip after Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages in the 7 October attacks on Israel.
WHO says moving al-Shifa patients 'not possible' without intensive care ambulance
Attempting to move many patients from al-Shifa hospital would be "highly problematic", a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization has said.
Speaking to the BBC earlier Margaret Harris said many of the patients at the hospital were "so severely ill, so injured, or such tiny babies, that you can only move them with actual transport, not on foot".
She went on to say doctors in al-Shifa knew moving the patients would not be possible “unless somebody was providing an intensive care ambulance.”
“We're also seeing in Gaza that the availability of hospital beds and services continues to shrink just as the need rises to proportions that would be impossible to deal with in the most normal circumstances," she said.
Earlier today the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 120 patients were still in al-Shifa, along with an "unspecified number" of premature babies.
The BBC can't independently verify these figures.
