Patients, staff and displaced people departed Gaza’s largest hospital on Saturday, health officials said, leaving behind only Israeli forces and a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move. The exodus came the day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications outage that forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.

The Israeli military on Saturday denied that it ordered an evacuation of the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza after Palestinian media reports said the army had asked everyone to leave the medical complex within an hour’s time.