The WHO confirmed this Friday that the last major operational hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip is “out of service”, following an attack by the Israeli army against Hamas fighters near the hospital.
“This morning’s attack on the Kamal Adwan hospital put the last major health center in northern Gaza, located in Beit Lahia, out of service,” declared the World Health Organization (WHO) on the X social network.
“First information indicates that main services were set on fire and destroyed during the attack. Sixty health professionals and 25 patients are in critical condition,” added the Geneva-based international organization.
The Israeli army had announced 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, Hossam Abou Safiya, announced that five staff members had been killed in an Israeli attack.
The Health Ministry of the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, described that the Israeli military forced medical staff and patients at the Kamal Adwan Hospital to gather in the courtyard and take off their clothes in the middle of winter.
Some were taken to an unknown location, while several patients were sent to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which was shut down after an Israeli attack this week.
During their attacks, Israeli troops often carry out mass arrests, leaving men in their underwear to be interrogated, in what the military says is a security measure as it searches for Hamas fighters.
Kamal Adwan Hospital has been hit several times in the past three months by Israeli troops as they wage an offensive against Hamas fighters in neighboring neighborhoods, according to clinical staff.
The Israeli military claims to be conducting operations against Hamas infrastructure and militants in the hospital area, without providing details, reiterating that fighters from the Palestinian group maintain their presence in the facilities, although there is no proof and the hospital team denies this.
The Ministry of Health also reported that Israeli troops set fires in several parts of Kamal Adwan, including the laboratory and surgery department.
According to ministry figures, 25 patients and 60 healthcare professionals remain in the hospital, out of the 75 patients and 180 staff who were there, but these data cannot be confirmed independently.
“The fire is blazing throughout the hospital,” an unidentified member of hospital staff said in an audio message posted on the social media accounts of hospital director Hossam Abu Safiya.
The message added that some evacuated patients were disconnected from oxygen.
“Right now, there are patients who could die at any time,” he warned.
Since October, Israel’s offensive has practically isolated the areas of Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, in the north of the Gaza Strip, and leveled much of it.
Thousands of Palestinians were forced to leave the region, but many others are believed to still remain in the area where the Kamal Adwan hospital is located.
This area has been without access to food and other goods for months, increasing fears of hunger. The UN says Israeli troops allowed only four humanitarian deliveries to this location between December 1 and 23.
Israel launched its campaign in the Gaza Strip promising to destroy Hamas after the Palestinian group’s attack on Israeli territory, on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people died and another 250 were taken hostage.
Israel’s bombing and offensive campaign, which has lasted almost 15 months, has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, and devastated the territory’s health sector.
More than 90% of the 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have been expelled from their homes and the majority of them are now sheltering in extensive and miserable improvised tent camps in the south and center of the territory in the middle of winter, with temperatures falling below ten degrees Celsius.
Source: rr.sapo.pt
