A doctor, a lab technician and two maintenance workers were killed as a fourth baby died of a cold in three days during Israel’s genocide.
The Israeli genocide has killed five staff at one of the last functioning hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, the facility’s director says, while another baby freezes to death in the besieged and bombed Palestinian enclave.
Hussam Abu Safia, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital In Beit Lahiya on Thursday it was said that the “martyrs also included a doctor.”
Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from central Gaza, said the attack killed a laboratory technician and two maintenance workers.
“We know that the hospital is one of the few medical facilities still operating, and it has the bare minimum of staff and medical supplies,” she said.
“Israeli forces attacked the area around Kamal Adwan Hospital, sending quadcopters into the hospital and shooting Palestinians.”
The hospital was shut down after weeks of intervention almost daily attacks. Earlier, Israeli forces killed the head of the hospital’s intensive care unit, Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout, and injured dozens of medical personnel in attacks on and near the facility.
Khoudary said Palestinian rescue workers had been unable to reach the bodies of those killed in hospital. “People are unable to bury the Palestinians who are killed every day by Israeli forces in northern Gaza,” she added.
Israel launched a large-scale ground offensive in the northern Gaza Strip on October 5, saying it was aimed at preventing the Palestinian group Hamas from regrouping.
Since then, sufficient humanitarian aid, including food, medicine and fuel, has not been allowed into the area, leaving the remaining population on the brink of starvation.
The World Health Organization has described conditions at Kamal Adwan Hospital as “appalling” and said operations were operating at a “minimal level.”
Another baby freezes to death
A fourth child has now died because of extreme cold in Gaza within 72 hours, the Wafa news agency reported on Thursday.
Medical sources said the baby died due to a drop in temperature as humanitarian conditions were terrible across the enclave.
“The tents don’t protect you from the cold, and at night it gets very cold and you have no way to keep warm,” said Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, the senior pediatrician at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza region of Khan Younis.
More than a year of Israeli attacks and a lack of aid deliveries have left many families in Gaza without adequate shelter and resources to cope with the changing weather.
Local health authorities told Wafa that maternal food shortages were contributing to an increase in health problems among children and placing additional strain on medical facilities and emergency services.
The Israeli bombing and ground invasion of Gaza has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children. The offensive has also caused widespread destruction and displaced about 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, often multiple times.
Hundreds of thousands of people are crammed into tent camps along the coast as the cold, wet winter sets in. Aid agencies are struggling to deliver food and supplies and report shortages of blankets, warm clothing and firewood.
