Gaza’s health ministry said on Friday hundreds of patients and staff were detained in north Gaza’s last functioning hospital, after the Israeli army said it was on the ground in the area.

‘Israeli forces have stormed and are present inside Kamal Adwan Hospital’ in the city of Jabalia, the ministry said in a statement.

‘They are detaining hundreds of patients, medical staff and some displaced individuals from neighbouring areas who sought refuge in the hospital from continuous bombardment,’ it added.

The Israeli army its forces and Shin Bet operatives had targeted the Kamal Adwan area.

Army and Israeli Security Agency forces ‘are operating in the area of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalia, based on intelligence information regarding the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure’, it said in a statement.

Israeli forces had surrounded the hospital in Jabalia’s refugee camp before entering the premises, Gaza’s civil defence agency said.

‘More than 150 patients and staff, including medical and nursing teams, are besieged by the Israeli army inside Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalia Camp, northern Gaza Strip,’ the first responders agency’s spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.

COGAT — the Israeli defence ministry body that manages civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories — said Friday it had allowed the transfer of 23 patients out of the hospital the previous night by Palestinian ambulances and UN vehicles.

Kamal Adwan is the last functioning hospital in Gaza’s north.

The facility has been struggling with shortages since the start of war, which have been increasingly aggravated by the launch of an Israeli operation in the northern Gaza earlier this month.

‘There has been no supply or provision of food, medicine, or essential medical supplies needed to save the lives of the injured and sick in the hospital,’ Gaza’s health ministry said, calling the situation inside ‘catastrophic in every sense of the word’.

COGAT said in its statement it had allowed the transfer of one fuel truck, ‘180 blood units and a truckload of medical equipment’ donated by UN agencies.

Hamas called the storming of Kamal Adwan ‘a war crime and a flagrant violation of international laws.’

Jabalia, along with other parts of the Palestinian territory’s north, has been subject to an intensive military operation since October 6 that has left 770 dead, the civil defence reported.

‘Since the start of operational activity in Jabalia, approximately 45,000 Palestinian civilians have evacuated, and IDF (Israeli army) troops have eliminated hundreds of terrorists’, the Israeli military said.