“The situation here is catastrophic. The three remaining hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, namely Kamal Adwan, the Indonesian (government), and Al-Awda (private), are being subjected to Israeli bombing and siege. However, the hospitals continue to operate partially,” with these words expressed by the Assistant Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Maher Shamiya. About the enormous pressure on the health system in the northern Gaza Strip governorate as a result of the Israeli war of annihilation.
Doctors at Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda, and Indonesian Hospitals refused to abandon their patients, despite evacuation orders issued by the Israeli occupation army at the beginning of its most recent major attack on the northern Gaza Strip 16 days ago, and they appealed to the international community, the Red Cross, and the World Health Organization to open a humanitarian corridor to bring in fuel, medical supplies, and food.
Shamiya confirmed, in press statements, that the occupation forces bombed the upper floors of Kamal Adwan Hospital with several shells, causing a complete power outage. An Israeli drone also targeted the hospital courtyard, killing a Palestinian and wounding two others.
He stated that the hospital’s capacity has completely reached its limit, with all departments, including intensive care and children’s nurseries, being full.
Maher Shamiya pointed out that floor mattresses have been used in the maternity ward, which is undergoing renovation to receive more infected people.
As for the attack that targeted Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, Shamiya said that this hospital also suffered direct hits on the upper floors, without clarifying the nature of the targeting.
Regarding the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, Shamiya confirmed that Israeli tanks surrounded the hospital and destroyed its walls, and also bombed the main electrical generator, causing a power outage, which in turn led to the death of two patients in the intensive care department.
Shamiya stated that the three hospitals suffer from a severe shortage of medical staff, especially specialists in specialized surgeries, as there are only a few of them left to deal with the large numbers of infections, pointing out that the continuation of the Israeli siege has caused a shortage of medicines, medical supplies, food, water and the necessary fuel. To operate the equipment within the three hospitals.
Shamiya renewed his ministry’s demand for international institutions concerned with protecting hospitals and civilian facilities and sparing them “Israeli madness,” stressing that these hospitals should have absolutely nothing to do with what is happening on the ground.
Since October 6, the occupation army has been waging a war of extermination on the northern Gaza Strip, committing horrific massacres by bombing homes and shelter centers, blowing up, destroying and burning entire residential neighborhoods, in addition to preventing the entry of food and water into the region, leaving hundreds of martyrs and wounded in a state of almost complete disruption. The work of ambulance and civil defense crews as a result of being targeted by the Israeli occupation forces or prevented from performing their duties.
International condemnations
The worsening situation as a result of the occupation’s continued targeting of hospitals in northern Gaza prompted the Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Joyce Msuya, to call for the need to protect civilians, the wounded, the sick, health care workers, and health facilities in accordance with international humanitarian law.
“The horrific news coming from northern Gaza reveals that the Palestinians are suffering untold horrors under the siege imposed by Israeli forces,” Msuya said.
She added in statements published on the official website of the United Nations, “People are trapped under rubble in northern Gaza, and ambulance and civil defense teams are prevented from reaching them, and hospitals crowded with large numbers of patients are being bombed.”
Msuya stressed the need for these atrocities to stop, and for international humanitarian law to be respected. Israel also called for the need to comply with the interim measures issued by the International Court of Justice.
For his part, the Humanitarian Affairs Coordinator in the occupied Palestinian territories, Muhannad Hadi, called for the need to allow medical and rescue teams to arrive without delay to save lives, saying that “international humanitarian law is an obligation that must always be respected.”
Hadi added in a statement that the direct bombardment of Al Awda and Indonesian Hospitals – two of the three hospitals still operating in the North Gaza Governorate – deepens the already worrying humanitarian crisis in the northern Gaza Strip.
In the past two weeks, Israeli forces have increased their pressure on these hospitals to evacuate them, but the patients have nowhere to go. Patients, medical staff, and displaced people were injured, according to the UN coordinator.
Hadi pointed out that since last Friday, Israeli forces have not responded to an urgent request from the United Nations to reach northern Gaza to help rescue dozens of wounded people trapped under the rubble, noting that “every minute is important and these delays threaten lives.” “Hospitals, patients, medical staff and other civilians must always be protected. They are never a target,” he said.
Systematic destruction
Commenting on the systematic Israeli war on hospitals, the Director-General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, said, “The occupation deliberately, from the first moment of entering Gaza, destroyed the health system, and thus aimed to cut off the element of security and safety for the local population, as part of a systematic plan to displace the population.” North of the Gaza Strip towards the southern regions.
He added, in an interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net, that the occupation army is still implementing the displacement plan and has not given up on it, as it was always asking us, the medical teams, during its siege of hospitals to transfer doctors and patients via Salah al-Din Street to the southern regions, and it brought buses and ambulances, and was facilitating the deportation of the injured. From Al-Shifa Hospitals in Gaza City and the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia.
According to Al-Bersh, the occupation is repeating the situation again by besieging hospitals in northern Gaza and cutting off all medical and food supplies in order to force people into forced displacement within the so-called “generals’ plan.”
In turn, the former Undersecretary of the Egyptian Ministry of Health, Mustafa Jawish, said, “The intention of the occupation army was very clear from the first moment of its invasion of the northern Gaza Strip, which was to deliberately destroy all necessities of life, especially hospitals, and completely burn the health infrastructure.”
He added in an interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the occupation began its campaign on hospitals in the first month of the war on Gaza by bombing the Baptist Hospital, and compared what happened to the Allied bombing of Berlin hospitals in World War II. Then it began its siege of Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, under the pretext of the presence of tunnels, before It expands in targeting hospitals and ambulances and targeting medical teams with killing and arrest in the face of the world’s silence.
Jawish called for urgent international intervention to lift the siege on hospitals in northern Gaza and provide them with fuel and medical supplies, in addition to establishing field hospitals with the guarantee of the international community.
The genocide committed by Israel, with American support, left more than 142,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly.
Tel Aviv continues its massacres, ignoring the UN Security Council resolution to end them immediately, and the orders of the International Court of Justice to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and improve the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
