DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces stormed one of the last hospitals in the northern part of Gaza on Friday, forcing many staff and patients to leave the facility, the territory's health ministry said.
According to staff, Kamal Adwan Hospital has been hit several times in the past three months by Israeli forces conducting an offensive against Hamas fighters in surrounding neighborhoods. The ministry said an attack on the hospital a day earlier killed five medical staff.
The Israeli military said it was carrying out operations against Hamas infrastructure and fighters in the area surrounding the hospital, without providing details. It repeated claims that Hamas fighters were operating within Kamal Adwan, although it provided no evidence.
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Hospital officials have denied the allegations.
The Health Ministry said troops forced medical staff and patients to gather in the hospital courtyard and take off their clothes amid winter temperatures. They were led out of the hospital, some to an unknown location, while some patients were sent to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which was decommissioned after a raid in Israel earlier this week.
The ministry said troops set fires to several parts of Kamal Adwan, including the hospital's laboratory and surgical department. It said 25 patients and 60 health care workers remained at the hospital, out of 75 patients and 180 staff who had been there. The ministry's story could not be independently confirmed and attempts to reach hospital staff were unsuccessful.
“Fire is burning everywhere in the hospital,” an unidentified staff member said in an audio message from the hospital posted on director Hossam Abu Safiya's social media accounts. The staffer said some evacuated patients had been disconnected from oxygen. “There are patients right now who could die at any time,” she says.
During raids, Israeli forces regularly carry out mass detentions, stripping men to their underwear for interrogation, which the military says is a security measure as they search for Hamas fighters. Although the AP does not have access to Kamal Adwan, armed Hamas security men in plain clothes have been seen in other hospitals in Gaza, controlling access to certain areas or the distribution of supplies.
Since October, the Israeli offensive has virtually closed off the northern Gaza areas of Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and razed large parts of the districts. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were expelled, but thousands are believed to remain in the area where Kamal Adwan and two other hospitals are located. Troops raided Kamal Adwan earlier in October, and on Tuesday troops stormed and evacuated the nearby Indonesian hospital.
The area has been cut off from food and other aid for months, raising fears of famine. The UN says Israeli forces allowed only four humanitarian deliveries to the area between December 1 and 23.
Israeli rights groups Physicians for Human Rights-Israel petitioned Israel's Supreme Court earlier this week to halt military attacks on Kamal Adwan. It warned that a forced evacuation of the hospital would “abandon thousands of residents in northern Gaza.” Before the latest deaths Thursday, the group documented five other staffers killed by Israeli fire since October.
Israel's nearly 15-month campaign of bombings and offensives in Gaza has devastated the territory's health sector. A year ago it carried out a wave of raids on hospitals in northern Gaza, including the Kamal Adwan, Indonesian and nearby al-Awda hospitals, saying they served bases for Hamas, although evidence was scant was.
According to the Health Ministry, Israel's campaign has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, and injured more than 108,000 others. The count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. More than 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians have been driven from their homes, and most of them are now sheltering in vast, squalid tent camps in southern and central Gaza.
Israel launched its campaign vowing to destroy Hamas after the group's attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which militants killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 others. About a hundred Israelis remain trapped in Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
