Israeli troops stormed one of the last hospitals operating in northern Gaza on Friday, December 27, igniting fires and forcing many staff and patients outside to strip in winter weather, the territory’s health ministry said.
Kamal Adwan Hospital has been hit multiple times over the past three months by Israeli troops waging an offensive against Hamas fighters in surrounding neighbourhoods. According to hospital staff and the Gaza health ministry, a strike on the hospital a day earlier killed five medical staff.
Earlier this week, Israel’s military said it was conducting operations against Hamas infrastructure and militants in the area of the hospital, without giving details. It repeated claims that Hamas fighters operate inside Kamal Adwan but provided no evidence, even though the hospital officials denied it.
The Gaza Health Ministry claims Israeli troops forced medical personnel and patients to assemble in the yard and remove their clothes. Some were led to an unknown location, while some patients were sent to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, which was knocked out of operation after an Israel raid this week, the ministry added.
Israeli troops during raids frequently carry out mass detentions, stripping men to their underwear for questioning in what the military says is a security measure as they search for Hamas fighters.
The Health Ministry said Israeli troops also set fires in several parts of Kamal Adwan, including the laboratory and surgery department. It said 25 patients and 60 health workers remained in the hospital out of 75 patients and 180 staff who had been there.
The account could not be independently confirmed, and attempts to reach hospital staff were unsuccessful.
“Fire is ablaze everywhere in the hospital,” an unidentified member of the staff said in an audio message posted on the social media accounts of hospital director Hossam Abu Safiya. The staffer said some evacuated patients had been unhooked from oxygen. “There are currently patients who could die at any moment,” she said.
The Israeli rights group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel this week petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice seeking a halt to military attacks on Kamal Adwan. It warned that forcibly evacuating the hospital would “abandon thousands of residents in northern Gaza.”
Before the latest deaths on Thursday, the group documented five other staffers killed by Israeli fire since October.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza vowing to destroy Hamas after the group’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted some 250 others. Around 100 Israelis remain captive in Gaza, and around a third are believed to be dead.
