One of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, is “putting up with everything more frequent attacks“, Gaza’s health ministry said on Friday after Israeli forces entered the hospital and “forcibly” removed health workers, patients and family members while military vehicles surrounded the hospital.
“Operating and surgical departments, the laboratory, maintenance and emergency units were completely burnt down, and the fire is now spreading to the buildings,” the ministry said in a statement.
Ambulances have reportedly been dispatched to transport the injured to an Indonesian hospital while the evacuation of people inside the hospital continues, it said NBC News.
“There are patients who have threatened to die at any time due to the harsh conditions,” the statement said.
In response to a request from NBC News, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they attacked the hospital after receiving information about the “presence of terrorist infrastructure and operatives carrying out terrorist activities” inside the facility.
They added that “IDF troops enabled the safe evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel before the operation” and that they were continuing “intense efforts to allow patients to continue receiving care at other hospitals.”
NBC News reached out to the Gaza Health Ministry for a response to the IDF’s accusations that the hospital was being used for military purposes.
dr. Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital’s director, said in an Instagram story that the Israeli army “burned down all the operational departments in the hospital” while medical staff were still present inside. He added that some of the workers were also arrested.
Not long after, the Ministry of Health issued a statement saying that the fate of staff and patients became “unknown” after “communication with the hospital director was cut off.”
The attack and removal of people followed an Israeli airstrike that hit a building opposite the hospital on Thursday, killing approximately 50 people, including five medical workers, according to a Health Ministry statement.
Abu Safia said in a separate statement on Thursday that among the dead were Dr. Ahmed Samour, a pediatrician who worked at the hospital, and Esraa, a laboratory technician, who went out to bring food to his father and brother.
Also killed was a maintenance technician, Fares, who was rushing to the scene to try to save others, Abu Safia said.
“It is another dark day in the continuing series of crimes against Kamal Adwan Hospital and its staff,” he added.
Israeli attacks on the hospital over the past few weeks have killed several medical workers and patients, including the director of the hospital’s intensive care unit, Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health noted that three public hospitals that operated in the northern Gaza Strip — Beit Hanoun Hospital, Indonesian Hospital and Kamal Adwan Hospital — are now out of service.
The war that followed terrorist attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people in southern Israel according to Israeli officials, has all but destroyed Gaza.
Israeli forces have since killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and destroyed much of the area’s basic infrastructure and health system.
In an October report, an independent United Nations panel accused Israel of pursuing a “coordinated policy of destroying Gaza’s health system as part of a broader attack on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination through sustained and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
A statement issued by the UN at the time warned that Israel’s targeting of health facilities could have “significant long-term negative effects on the civilian population.”
(Vijesti.ba)
www.vijesti.ba
