The WHO announced on Friday that the last major hospital in northern Gaza was ‘out of service’ after an Israeli army raid on Hamas fighters near the hospital, which the Palestinian Islamist movement claims was taken by storm.
‘This morning's raid on the Kamal Adwan hospital has put the last major health centre in northern Gaza, located in Beit Lahia, out of action’, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on X.
‘Initial reports indicate that key services were burnt down and destroyed during the raid. Sixty medical staff and 25 patients are in a critical condition’, added the Geneva-based international organisation.
The Israeli army had announced on Friday that it had launched an operation against Hamas fighters near this hospital, which plays a crucial role in a Gaza Strip whose health services have been devastated by 14 months of war between Israel and Hamas.
This operation near the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia comes a day after the hospital's director, Dr Hossam Abou Safiya, announced that five members of staff had been killed in an Israeli strike.
In its statement on Friday, the Israeli army described the hospital as a ‘stronghold of terrorist organisations (...) used as a hideout by terrorists’.
Based on intelligence information, Israeli forces launched an operation near the hospital, according to the army.
‘Troops are carrying out targeted operations’ and are trying to prevent civilians, patients and medical staff from being hit, it added.
Since 6 October, Israel has stepped up its ground and air offensive in the north of the Gaza Strip to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping, according to the army.
Before launching the operation near the hospital, the army said that its troops had ‘facilitated the safe evacuation of civilians, patients and medical staff’ from the establishment.
But according to Hamas, ‘the occupying army stormed the Kamal Adwan hospital, forcing medical staff, patients, wounded and displaced persons to evacuate’.
In a statement, it accused Israeli forces of ‘detaining the evacuees’.
‘Hamas holds the occupation fully responsible for the lives of the patients, the wounded and the medical staff, whom it has arrested and taken to an unknown location’, the movement added. It added that all communication with Hamas had been cut off.
The Israeli army regularly accuses Hamas of using hospitals as command centres to launch attacks against its forces. Hamas denies these accusations.
On Friday, the Palestinian movement ‘categorically denied’ in a statement ‘any military activity or presence of resistance fighters in the hospital’ Kamal Adwan.
‘The enemy's lies about the hospital are intended to justify the abominable crime committed today by the occupying army, which evacuated and set fire to all the hospital's services as part of a plan of extermination and forced displacement’, it added, calling for a UN commission of enquiry into “the scale of the crime” committed by the army in northern Gaza.
Quoting the hospital director, the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory claimed that the Israeli army had ‘set fire to all the hospital's surgical departments’.
On Friday morning, the hospital was housing around 350 people, including 75 wounded and sick people, as well as 180 medical staff, according to the hospital director.
Witnesses in the area told AFP that the hospital had been evacuated and that hundreds of people living nearby had been ‘forced to take refuge in the Al-Fakhoura school and the Indonesian hospital’ in Jabalia.
In response to an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israeli soil on 7 October 2023, the Israeli army launched a devastating offensive against the Palestinian territory, which it has been besieging ever since. According to the Hamas government's Ministry of Health, at least 45,436 Palestinians perished.
The Hamas attack from the Gaza Strip resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures.
With AFP.
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