GAZA: The health ministry in Gaza said 107 people, “mostly women and children,” were killed in overnight Israeli attacks. One person was killed and several wounded in shelling on Nasser Hospital’s orthopaedics department, it added.

The medical facility, the largest in southern Gaza, has been the site of heavy fighting for weeks.

Doctors Without Borders has condemned the Israeli military’s order to evacuate thousands of patients, staff and displaced people from the hospital.

The organisation said its staff are continuing to treat patients there “amid near impossible conditions”.

Nurse Mohammed al-Astal told AFP that the facility had been “besieged” for a month, with no food or drinking water left.

“At night, tanks opened heavy fire on the hospital and snipers on the roofs of buildings surrounding Nasser Hospital opened fire and killed three displaced people,” he said.

The leaders of Australia, Canada and New Zealand have warned Israel against a potentially “catastrophic” ground offensive in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, amplifying a growing chorus of international concern.

Urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “not to go down this path”, the trio of Commonwealth nations issued a rare joint statement expressing deep and growing worry about Israel’s prosecution of the months-long offensive.

“About 1.5 million Palestinians are taking refuge in the area, including many of our citizens and their families,” the group of US allies said.

“An expanded military operation would be devastating. We urge the Israeli government not to go down this path. There is simply nowhere else for civilians to go.”

In the face of mounting international pressure and a death toll that Gaza authorities say has now topped 28,000, Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead. He has promised Israeli forces will soon conduct a “powerful” operation in Rafah — a city filled with countless Gazans displaced by fighting elsewhere in the territory.