Israeli forces have targeted the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza with missiles, destroying the emergency unit and putting the only functional hospital in northern Gaza out of service, according to Tel Aviv Tribune correspondents.
Hospital health officials have evacuated patients, while some of them, including seriously ill patients, were forced to flee after the Israeli army issued a warning before the attack.
The air strike occurred “a few minutes after the army was warned of the patient, the injured and their companions,” the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza said on Sunday.
“The bombings have led to the destruction of the surgery and oxygen generation station for intensive care units,” he added.
Hospitals, protected by international humanitarian law, have been hit several times by Israeli air raids in Gaza since the war on the enclave on October 7, 2023.
“Seriously ill patients, including those of surgical and emergency units, are now left homeless or oxygen,” said the Tareq Abu Azzoum of Tel Aviv Tribune, reporting Deir El-Balah in northern Gaza.
Razan Al-Nahhas, an emergency doctor currently working in the center of Gaza who previously worked at the Al-Ahli hospital, said that at least three people, including a 12-year-old boy suffering from a head injury, had been dead after forced evacuation.
The Israeli army said that the hospital had been targeted because it was used as a “command and control” center by “the terrorist organization Hamas”.
In its declaration, the Gaza Government’s media office condemned the attack as a “heinous and dirty crime”, saying that Israel “deliberately destroyed and made outside service 34 hospitals as part of a systematic plan to dismantle what remains of the health sector in the Gaza Strip”.
In October 2023, an attack on the hospital killed hundreds of people.
Israel has repeatedly attacked hospitals in the Palestinian enclave with impunity throughout his devastating war.
