A health official describes gunfire and artillery shells outside Kamal Adwan Hospital as hundreds of people are trapped inside.
Terrified civilians are trapped inside Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza as Israeli forces surrounded the medical facility, a senior Health Ministry official told Tel Aviv Tribune.
More than 100 people were killed in strikes near the facility, the ministry said Tuesday.
“The Israeli occupying forces have besieged the hospital from all sides… We are being targeted with gunfire and artillery shells,” said Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Gaza Health Ministry, speaking from Kamal Adwan.
“Patients, the injured and those who have taken refuge in the hospital are gripped by fear; overwhelmed by horror,” he said.
Images by Kamal Adwan showed bodies swaddled in white, lined up in rows in a courtyard at the medical complex. Witnesses said anyone who tried to leave was shot at by Israeli snipers.
“We fear a massacre inside Kamal Adwan Hospital, as happened at (al-Shifa Hospital) and (Indonesian Hospital),” al-Bursh said.
“They have already killed us”
During the night, the wounded continued to flock to the hospital amid incessant bombardment, their heads and faces covered in dust. The hundreds of evacuees sheltering there are shown resting or being treated on the ground by doctors with extremely limited resources.
“What do they want from us? They’ve already killed us. Our families and friends died,” a man at the medical center told Tel Aviv Tribune.
A second man said he had gone to the hospital hoping to seek shelter from Israeli airstrikes, but his words were abruptly interrupted by the loud bang of an explosion that could have been heard very closely.
“We wish we hadn’t been left behind,” one woman shouted, her hands trembling and her voice laced with despair.
More than 1.1 million people were ordered in mid-October to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip and move south as Israeli troops advanced their ground offensive.
Fighting and airstrikes were halted during a week-long truce to allow the exchange of prisoners captured by Hamas during its attack on Israel on October 7 for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. The temporary cessation of fighting ended on Friday.
“Hold our position”
Since the end of the truce, Israeli forces have resumed attacks across Gaza with renewed intensity in the north, while also expanding their operations in the south.
Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed more than 15,900 Palestinians since October 7, after Hamas killed around 1,100 in Israel that day.
As international pressure mounts on Israel to show restraint in its attacks on civilians during the second phase of the war, dozens of deaths are being reported every night.
As of Monday evening, at least 158 people were confirmed dead, Gaza’s health ministry said. Among them, more than 108 were killed in strikes near Kamal Adwan Hospital; 40 corpses were received at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis. The previous night, the ministry said 349 people had been killed.
The situation at Kamal Adwan Hospital echoes events at al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, where people seeking shelter, critical patients and doctors were ordered, some at gunpoint, to evacuate after several days of siege. . Israel has denied doing so.
“The hospital is being attacked by Israeli forces with the aim of evacuating all the people inside the hospital,” al-Bursh said. “We, the medical staff, are holding on. We stand by our patients and the injured.
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