KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Patients, staff and displaced people left Gaza’s largest hospital Saturday, with one describing a panicked and chaotic evacuation as Israeli forces searched and face-scanned men among the evacuees and took some away.

       Israel’s military has been searching Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for traces of a Hamas command center that it alleges was located under the building — a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny. The evacuation, which Israel says was voluntary, left behind only Israeli forces and a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move.

       Advertisement

       “We left at gunpoint,” Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. “Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside.” He said he saw Israeli forces detain three men.