One of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospitals, Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahia, is “suffering from a stifling siege,” Gaza’s Health Ministry said Friday after Israeli forces stormed inside and removed health workers, patients and family members, as military vehicles surrounded the hospital.
“The operating and surgical departments, laboratory, maintenance, and emergency units have been completely burned, and the fire is now spreading to the buildings,” the ministry’s statement said.
Ambulances have reportedly been dispatched to transfer the injured to the Indonesian Hospital as those inside continue to be removed.
“There are patients who are threatened with death at any moment due to the harsh conditions,” the statement said.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital’s head, said in an Instagram story that the Israeli army was “burning all the operating departments in the hospital” while medical staff was still present inside. He added that some of the staff had also been arrested.
Shortly after, the Health Ministry issued a statement saying that the fate of the staff and patients had become “unknown” after “communication with the hospital director was cut off.”
The attack and removals follow an Israeli airstrike that hit a building opposite the hospital Thursday, killing approximately 50 people, including five medical staff, according to the Health Ministry.
Abu Safia had said in a separate statement Thursday that among those killed were Dr. Ahmed Samour, a pediatrician working in the hospital, and Esraa, a laboratory technician, who had gone outside to bring food to her father and brother.
A maintenance technician, Fares, was also hit as he rushed to the scene to try and rescue others, Abu Safia said.
“It is another dark day in the ongoing 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 medics and patients at Kamal Adwan, including the hospital’s ICU director, Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout.
The Palestinian Health Ministry noted that the three public hospitals operating in the northern Gaza Strip — Beit Hanoun Hospital, Indonesian Hospital and Kamal Adwan Hospital — are now all out of service.
In response to a request by NBC News, the Israel Defense Forces said it had targeted the hospital after receiving information about “the presence of terrorist infrastructure and operatives carrying out terror activities” inside.
It added that “IDF troops facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients, and medical personnel prior to the operation” and that it was continuing to “make extensive efforts to enable patients to continue receiving care in other hospitals.”
NBC News has reached out to Gaza’s Health Ministry for a response to the IDF’s accusation that the hospital had been used for military purposes.
The war that followed the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel according to Israeli officials, has decimated Gaza.
Israeli forces have since killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and destroyed much of the enclave’s basic infrastructure and health system.
In an October report, an independent commission for the United Nations accused Israel of perpetrating a “concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
A press statement issued by the U.N. at the time of the report’s release warned that Israel’s targeting of healthcare facilities risks “significant long-term detrimental effects on the civilian population.” (NBC)
