Israeli soldiers have stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last remaining medical facility in the northern Gaza Strip, setting fire to large parts and forcing hundreds of people to leave.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Friday that it had lost contact with staff at the hospital in Beit Lahiya, which has been under siege and heavy pressure from Israeli forces for weeks.
“The occupation forces are now in the hospital and burning it down,” Munir al-Bursh, the ministry’s director, said in a statement.
The Israeli army issued a statement confirming that it had launched a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital, claiming without evidence that the medical facility “serves as a Hamas terrorist stronghold in the northern Gaza Strip.”
During their assault on Gaza, Israeli forces have regularly besieged and attacked medical facilities housing both patients and displaced families under similar pretexts.
Fire breaks out
Youssef Abu el-Rish, Gaza’s deputy health minister, said Israeli forces set fire to the surgical department, laboratory and a warehouse at the hospital.
According to a separate statement from the enclave’s health ministry, the fire has spread to the rest of the medical complex.
It said Kamal Adwan was “suffering under a crushing siege as operations and operations departments, laboratory, maintenance, ambulance units and warehouses were completely burnt down.”
“The fire has now begun to spread to all buildings,” the statement continued.
It continues: “The (Israeli) occupying army, under threat of weapons and gun barrels, forcibly transfers patients and injured people to the Indonesian hospital, where there is a lack of medical supplies, water, medicine and even electricity and generators.”
Like the Indonesian and al-Awda hospitals, Kamal Adwan has been repeatedly attacked by Israeli forces, particularly after they launched a renewed ground offensive in the area more than two months ago. The north, where famine is looming, has been under total siege ever since and is cut off from the rest of the Gaza Strip.
Al-Bursh said the Israeli army ordered 350 people to leave Kamal Adwan and go to a nearby school housing displaced families. These included 75 patients, their companions and 185 medical staff.
Footage circulated in local media showed smoke rising from the Kamal Adwan Hospital area.
Much of the area around the northern cities of Jabalia, Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and systematically razed, leading to speculation that Israel intends to maintain the area as a closed buffer zone.
“Devastating Blow”
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said there was a lack of information from Kamal Adwan on Friday, but witnesses who were at the facility said they were with Faced inspections by Israeli soldiers.
Witnesses also “confirmed that the Israeli military carried out field executions in the area around the hospital,” Abu Azzoum said, adding that the fate of the hospital director was unknown.
Kamal Adwan experienced a “gradual escalation” and “deliberate attacks” by the Israeli army, our correspondent said, adding that the forced evacuations and fires had dealt a “devastating blow to the already fragile health system in the northern Gaza Strip.”
On Thursday, health officials said five medical workers, including a pediatrician, were killed by Israeli fire in Kamal Adwan.
In a statement, Hamas blamed Israel and the United States for the fate of the hospital inmates.
“The (Israeli) occupying government is committing crimes in Gaza, relying on cover from America and some Western capitals that are partners in the ongoing genocide,” Telegram said.
United Nations World Health Organization spokesperson Margaret Harris expressed concern about the situation.
“We are witnessing attacks on civilians and the health system in Gaza,” Harris told Al Jazeera. “What Gaza’s hospitals are being subjected to is terrible, and what we are experiencing is a punishment for the population.”
Elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people, including 15 people in a single house in Gaza City, medics and the civilian emergency service said.
Also on Friday, 14 countries joined or signaled their intention to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Organizations such as the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also found that Israeli actions in Gaza are consistent with the crime of genocide.
Israel’s attack has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians since October last year, according to health officials in the enclave. Most of the 2.3 million residents have been displaced and much of the Gaza Strip lies in ruins.
