Around 8,000 displaced people have been evacuated from a besieged hospital in Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Younis where they had sought refuge, the Red Cross has said, AFP reports.

“The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is beyond catastrophic,” Tommaso Della Longa, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told reporters in Geneva.

He said the ICRC was told the Al-Amal hospital, run by the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS), had been largely emptied following a lengthy siege by Israeli forces.

“Eight thousand internally displaced people who sought refuge in our Palestinian Red Crescent hospital in Khan Yunis … left the hospital yesterday”, he explained.

He said Al-Amal had been under siege for more than two weeks, surrounded by heavy shelling and fighting. It was hit several times, including on Friday, when a PRCS volunteer was killed.

Around 100 elderly, wounded and disabled patients remained there, with about 100 staff and volunteers, the ICRC said.

Even before the evacuation, Al-Amal had faced immense challenges, including dire shortages of medicines, food and water, Della Longa said.