The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory held Israel responsible for the lives of dozens of children, patients, wounded, and members of medical staff who were detained by the Israeli occupation army after storming Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.
The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory said in a statement today, Friday, that the occupation forces, after repeated bombardment yesterday and at dawn today on Kamal Adwan Hospital, where more than 150 children, patients, and medical staff are housed, stormed the hospital and forced everyone to gather in its courtyard.
He added that he received information that the Israeli army separated men from women and children, and began subjecting all those over the age of 13 to interrogation, torture – including medical personnel – and assaulting them.
He pointed out that 15 patients in the intensive care room – including children – are at risk of death after the Israeli army bombed the hospital’s oxygen station, and there is preliminary information about the death of a number of children due to lack of oxygen.
The Observatory confirmed that communication is currently completely cut off with everyone in the hospital, in light of the threat to everyone’s lives, noting that the storming of the hospital came a few hours after the arrival of an international delegation, bringing a limited amount of medicines and fuel.
Euro-Med called on the United Nations and international organizations to assume their responsibilities and oblige Israel to release and protect medical staff, the sick and the wounded, and to ensure the resumption of the work of the hospital, ambulance and civil defense crews, to save what can be saved of the lives of thousands of Palestinians there, as they are among the civilian groups and objects protected under international humanitarian law.
Kamal Adwan Hospital had previously been stormed and destroyed by the Israeli army during the first incursion into northern Gaza in December 2023 and was later partially restored to operation. In the past three weeks, it had endured receiving the largest number of victims of the third Israeli incursion into northern Gaza, the number of whose victims exceeded 900. One death and 1,500 wounded.
An unprecedented disaster
Euro-Med warned that the conditions in northern Gaza are catastrophic in an unprecedented manner, as homes are being bombed and burned and there are no ambulance or civil defense crews to assist in rescue.
He pointed out that at least 8 homes were subjected to intense Israeli bombing last night, amid preliminary information about the presence of approximately 200 martyrs and wounded, suggesting that the wounded were killed because there was no one to rescue them or any means to rescue them and provide treatment to them due to the comprehensive Israeli siege, and the imposition of a ban on movement in the area. North, besieging, targeting and storming hospitals.
Euro-Med reiterated its warning that Israel’s disruption of the work of civil defense and ambulance crews in parallel with the targeting and siege of hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip means an official decision to execute thousands of injured and sick people, as part of its declared effort to complete the emptying of the region of its population by force and expel them under the burden of killing, starvation and intimidation, within the framework of the crime of genocide. committed in the Gaza Strip for more than a year.
The Observatory called on all countries and the United Nations to implement their international legal obligations to stop the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip, impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, hold it accountable and punish it for all its crimes, and take all effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians there.
He also appealed to the international community to intervene to prevent the forced displacement of the residents of the north and ensure their return to their areas of residence, release all Palestinian detainees who were arbitrarily arrested, enter all forms of food and non-food humanitarian aid – especially life-saving – quickly and without obstacles, and ensure the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation army. From the entire Gaza Strip.