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Photos: Published by Haaretz
A destroyed ambulance in front of Kamal Adwan hospital, October. Credit: AFP

WHO Statement.

Patients inside Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, Thursday. Credit: Stringer/Reuters

A fire outside the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, this week. Credit: Stringer/Reuters
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The World Health Organization said on Friday that the hospital, the 'last major health facility' in the enclave's north, had been put out of service after Israeli operations

by Jack Khoury, Yaniv Kubovich, The Associated Press, Reuters for Haaretz
Dec 27, 2024

Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of only three medical facilities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, on Friday, ordering dozens of patients and hundreds of others to evacuate the compound, officials said.

Hamas' Health Ministry said Israeli troops set fires in several parts of the hospital, including the lab and surgery department. The ministry later added that the army had detained dozens of staff members, including the hospital's director.

Israel's military said there was only a small fire in an empty hospital building, and was unaware of any Israeli gunfire causing the blaze. The army said the hospital was being used by Hamas fighters as a base, although it did not provide evidence.

The World Health Organization said on X that the hospital had been put out of service following Israeli operations there, though "60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition, including those on ventilators, reportedly remain in the hospital."

In separate incidents across Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people on Friday, medics said. One of those strikes on a house in Gaza City killed 15 people, medics and the civil emergency service said. The deadly strikes come a day after reports of Israeli forces killing 50 Gazans on Thursday.

The Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza said contact with staff inside the facility, which has been under heavy pressure from Israeli forces for weeks, had been lost.

"The occupation forces are inside the hospital now and they are burning it," Munir Al-Bursh, director of the health ministry, said in a statement.

The ministry statement added, "Soldiers have forced the medical staff, the patients and the people accompanying them to remove their clothing in the bitter cold and have led them outside the hospital to an unknown place." It added that some patients were sent to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which was knocked out of operation after an Israel raid earlier this week.

The Israeli military said it had made efforts to mitigate harm to civilians and had "facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel prior to the operation" but gave no details. "Kamal Adwan Hospital serves as a Hamas terrorist stronghold in northern Gaza, from which terrorists have been operating throughout the war," it said in a statement.

"The terrorist organization Hamas is systematically violating international law, cruelly exploiting the population and civilian institutions in the Gaza Strip for terrorist activities," the IDF stressed. "Before and during the operation in the area of the hospital, the IDF is being lenient with the population and allowing it, the patients and the hospital staffers, to evacuate in an organized fashion from the area."

The army asserts the evacuation was carried out in coordination with local health officials and international organizations "via delineated evacuation routes." It said the evacuations included ambulances that took them to "other hospitals in the Gaza Strip to ensure continued medical treatment."

The army ended the statement by claiming that "the IDF and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories invest widespread efforts to allow patients to continue receiving treatment in other hospitals, including making it easier to evacuate Kamal Adwan Hospital, via steps that facilitate transferring equipment, supplies, food and fuel and the return of hospital activity in the area, while keeping in touch with hospital figures."

Kamal Adwan, as well as the Indonesia and Al-Awda hospitals, have been repeatedly attacked by Israeli forces, which have been clearing out the northern edge of the Gaza Strip for weeks, Palestinian medical staff say. Friday's raid comes a day after the army evacuated the nearby Indonesian Hospital and continued to press Al-Awda Hospital.

Bursh said the army had ordered 350 people inside the facility to leave to a nearby school sheltering displaced families, giving them 15 minutes to evacuate. They included 75 patients, their companions, and 185 medical staff.

Hamas' Al-Aqsa Television said that hours after the raid, Israeli forces set the hospital ablaze. Footage circulating on Palestinian and Arab media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed smoke rising from the area of the hospital.

There was no Israeli military comment.

Much of the area around the northern towns of Jabaliya, Beit Hanun and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and systematically razed, fueling speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends. Israel denies the claims saying its campaign is to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping.

On Thursday, at least 50 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting a building in the northern Gaza Strip, the Hamas-controlled health authority said. Among the victims were five staff members of a nearby clinic in Beit Lahiya, including a pediatrician, a laboratory assistant, two paramedics, and a technician, according to the authority and the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya.

The information cannot be independently verified.

The IDF Spokesperson's Office announced that forces from the 401st Brigade had begun operating on Thursday in the area of the hospital in wake of "advance intelligence about the presence of terrorists, Hamas infrastructure and terrorist operations there." The military provided no details. It repeated claims that Hamas fighters were operating inside Kamal Adwan, though it provided no evidence. Hospital officials have denied the accusations.

Abu Safiya, who himself was wounded by Israeli fire on Sunday, said on Tuesday that Israeli drones detonated explosives near the hospital and that 20 people were wounded, including five medical staff. A video uploaded to X shows an Israeli military vehicle laying down a box next to the hospital, from which a robot carrying explosives emerged.

Israeli forces ordered on Sunday the closure and evacuation of Kamal Adwan Hospital, after it came under heavy Israeli fire without prior warning on Saturday night. Abu Safiya told Reuters via text message that obeying the order to shut down was "next to impossible" because there were not enough ambulances to get patients out.

In a statement, Hamas held Israel and the United States responsible for the fate of patients, injured people and the medical staff inside the hospital.

On Thursday, it was reported that a baby girl had died of hypothermia overnight in Gaza. The three-week-old baby was the third to die from the cold in Gaza's tent camps in recent days, doctors said, deaths that underscore the squalid conditions, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crammed into often ramshackle tents after fleeing Israeli offensives.

The father of 3-week-old Sila, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, wrapped her in a blanket to try and keep her warm in their tent in the Muwasi area, where displaced civilians have sought temporary shelter, outside the town of Khan Yunis, but it wasn't enough, he told The Associated Press.

He said the tent was not sealed from the wind and the ground was cold, as temperatures on Tuesday night dropped to 9 degrees Celsius (48 degrees Fahrenheit.) Muwasi is a desolate area of dunes and farmland on Gaza's Mediterranean coast.

"It was very cold overnight and as adults we couldn't even take it. We couldn't stay warm," he said. Sila woke up crying three times overnight and in the morning they found her unresponsive, her body stiff.

"She was like wood," said al-Faseeh. They rushed her to a field hospital where doctors tried to revive her, but her lungs had already deteriorated. Images of Sila taken by the AP showed the little girl with purple lips, her pale skin blotchy.

Ahmed al-Farra, director of the children's ward at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, confirmed that the baby died of hypothermia. He said two other babies – one 3 days old, the other a month old – had been brought to the hospital over the past 48 hours after dying of hypothermia.

Meanwhile, a new report published by the New York Times reveals that military orders issued by IDF leadership in the immediate hours after Hamas launched its October 7 attacks drastically changed previous protocols, allowing for unprecedented levels of risk to civilians in Gaza. Times investigators found that almost as soon as Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza following the October 7 attacks, IDF leadership relaxed safeguards meant to protect civilians, including risk assessment procedures and target location methods.

When rules were broken or disasters occurred, the investigation found, little effort was made to review what happened or discipline those involved.

Israel's campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, according to health officials in the enclave, who do not distinguish between combatant and civilian fatalities. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.

With reporting from DPA

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