Israeli soldiers stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last medical facility in the northern Gaza Strip, burning large sections and ordering hundreds of people to leave.
Gaza’s health ministry said Friday that contact had been lost with staff at Beit Lahiya hospital, which has been under siege and under heavy pressure from Israeli forces for weeks. It has no information on the fate of the patients who were inside, he adds.
“The occupying forces are currently inside the hospital and they are burning it,” Munir al-Bursh, director of the ministry, said in a statement.
The Israeli military issued a statement confirming that it had launched a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital, claiming without evidence that the medical facility “serves as a Hamas terrorist stronghold in northern Gaza.”
Throughout their assault on Gaza, Israeli forces have systematically besieged and attacked medical facilities – housing both patients and displaced families – under similar pretexts.
A fire breaks out
Youssef Abu el-Rish, Gaza’s deputy health minister, said Israeli forces set fire to the hospital’s surgical ward, laboratory and a warehouse.
The fire then “spread to all buildings” in the medical complex, according to a separate statement from the enclave’s Health Ministry.
He said Kamal Adwan “is suffering from a suffocating siege, as the operation and surgery departments, laboratory, maintenance, ambulances and warehouses were completely burned.”
The ministry added that all generators at the facility had been destroyed.
He also said that “the (Israeli) occupying army is forcibly transferring patients and injured people under threat of guns and gun barrels to the Indonesian hospital, which lacks medical supplies, water, medicines and even electricity and generators.”
Like the Indonesian hospitals and al-Awda, Kamal Adwan has been repeatedly attacked by Israeli forces, notably after they launched a new ground offensive in the area more than two months ago. The north, where famine threatens, has since been completely besieged and cut off from the rest of the Gaza Strip.
Al-Bursh said the Israeli army ordered 350 people to leave Kamal Adwan and go to a nearby school housing displaced families. This included 75 patients, their companions and 185 medical staff.
Images circulating in local media showed smoke rising from the Kamal Adwan Hospital area.
Much of the area around the northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of residents and systematically razed, sparking speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone.
“Devastating blow”
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said information coming from Kamal Adwan on Friday was scant, but witnesses who were at the facility said they were inspected by Israeli soldiers.
Witnesses also “confirmed that the Israeli army carried out executions on the ground near the hospital,” Abu Azzoum said, adding that the fate of the hospital director is unknown.
Kamal Adwan witnessed a “gradual escalation” and “deliberate attacks” by the Israeli army, our correspondent said, adding that the forced evacuations and fires dealt a “devastating blow to the already existing health system.” fragile northern Gaza.
On Thursday, health officials said five medical staff, including a pediatrician, were killed by Israeli fire in Kamal Adwan.
In a statement, Hamas blamed Israel and the United States for the fate of the hospital occupants.
“The (Israeli) occupation government is committing crimes in Gaza, relying on American cover and some Western capitals which are partners in the ongoing genocide,” he said on Telegram.
UN World Health Organization spokesperson Margaret Harris expressed concern about the situation.
“We are seeing attacks on civilians and on the health system in Gaza,” Harris told Tel Aviv Tribune. “What hospitals in Gaza are being exposed to is horrible, and what we are witnessing represents a punishment for the population. »
Elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people, including 15 people in a single house in Gaza City, doctors and civil emergency services said.
Also Friday, 14 countries joined or signaled their intention to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Organizations such as the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also considered Israeli actions in Gaza to be consistent with the crime of genocide.
The Israeli attack has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians since October last year, according to health officials in the enclave. Most of the 2.3 million residents have been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.
