Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila called for an “urgent investigation” after Israeli forces were accused of crushing Palestinians, including injured patients, with bulldozers in the courtyard from Kamal Adwan Hospital, in northern Gaza.
On Saturday, doctors and other witnesses said Israeli forces bulldozed tents housing displaced Palestinians near the hospital – one of 11 hospitals still functioning inside Gaza since the launch of its military offensive by Israel on October 7 – and crushed them to death.
Witnesses told Tel Aviv Tribune that civilians were deliberately targeted.
“People were buried alive using bulldozers. Who could do this? Everyone who committed this crime must be brought to justice and brought before the International Criminal Court,” a witness said.
Several videos shared on social media also appear to show people crushed under rubble in front of Kamal Adwan Hospital.
“It crushed the people and their tents”
“The bulldozer destroyed a large part of the hospital facilities,” Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani Mahmoud said Sunday morning, reporting from Rafah in southern Gaza. “It crushed people and their tents in the courtyard and around 20 people were crushed and buried under the rubble,” he said.
In a press release, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency, Health Minister al-Kaila urged the international community to investigate what happened at the hospital and not ignore the “crimes of war” committed in Gaza.
She also pointed out that the Israeli army had destroyed the southern part of the hospital and said that 12 infants remained in the hospital’s incubators, without food or water.
While Israeli forces have now withdrawn from the hospital, the army said it arrested 90 people and discovered weapons and ammunition inside the hospital after the raid.
Israeli forces attacked the hospital on Tuesday after besieging and shelling it for several days.
“Fear and horror in the hospital”
Since Kamal Adwan Hospital was raided, doctors say, it has been filled with fear and horror.
“The injured need surgery but there is nothing we can do,” Wafa Albus, a doctor at the hospital, told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Pointing to a woman and a man lying on the floor, she said there were no mattresses for patients.
“Is this a hospital?” This situation is unbearable,” she declared.
She also described how Israeli forces treated patients and doctors during the days-long raid.
“They arrested the hospital director and questioned all the medical staff… They even let sniffer dogs on us. The dogs also attacked an elderly man in a wheelchair.
Earlier this week, Leo Cans, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) head of mission for Palestine, told Tel Aviv Tribune that the situation in Kamal Adwan was catastrophic.
“We are outraged by what is happening,” he said, adding that doctors in Gaza were operating in conditions comparable to those of the First World War.
“We operate on the ground. Children are arriving with very serious injuries and (surgeons) have to carry out many operations, but there are no more beds,” he said.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani highlighted how the raids at Kamal Adwan Hospital were similar to those at other hospitals earlier in the offensive. Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in the northern Gaza enclave, remains paralyzed after being previously targeted by Israeli forces.
The UN health agency on Saturday delivered medical supplies and medicines to the hospital, which “urgently needs to resume at least basic operations to continue serving the thousands of people in need of life-saving healthcare “.
“Only a handful of doctors and a few nurses, as well as 70 volunteers” were still working in what WHO staff described as “incredibly difficult circumstances,” according to the text.
Israeli troops also attacked the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, an area devastated by more than two months of relentless Israeli bombardment.
The World Health Organization says only 11 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain partially functional and has pleaded for them to remain intact.
“We cannot afford to lose health facilities or hospitals,” Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territories, said at a UN press briefing earlier this week by video link from Gaza.
“We hope and plead that this does not happen.”
