WHO plans more evacuations from Gaza hospital

Aid agencies hope to evacuate roughly 140 patients stranded in Gaza's Nasser hospital, a World Health Organisation official said on Thursday, as Palestinian authorities reported that Israeli troops withdrew from the complex and then stormed it again.

Medical teams had buried on the grounds of the hospital 13 patients who had died because the facility had no power or oxygen, Gaza's health ministry said.

The WHO says the hospital in Khan Younis, which is Gaza's second-largest and is crucial to the territory's crippled health services, stopped working last week after an Israeli siege followed by a raid.

The WHO and partners have so far carried out three evacuations from the hospital, the latest on Wednesday, transferring a total of 51 patients to southern Gaza, the UN agency's Ayadil Saparbekov told a press briefing.

"The WHO will continue to try evacuation of those critically ill and critically wounded patients from the Nasser hospital to other hospitals in the south, including the field hospitals that have been established in Rafah," he said.

"However, it's a very difficult and high-risk mission."

Israeli forces had withdrawn from the hospital, positioning themselves nearby and preventing movement to and from it before storming it once more, the Gaza health ministry said. There was no immediate comment from Israel.