Israel storms northern Gaza’s last hospital as remaining residents forced south
Palestinians evacuate from northern Gaza amid Israel’s siege, 4 December 2024.
Ahmed Ahmed reports in +972 on 27 December 2024:
In the morning hours of Dec. 27, Israeli army forces stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital compound in Beit Lahiya, culminating a nearly week-long siege of the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza.
Soldiers forcibly moved patients out of Kamal Adwan to the Indonesian Hospital further south in the city, which had itself been subjected to an evacuation order by the military several days earlier.
“Surgical departments, laboratory, maintenance, and emergency units have been completely burned, and the fire is now spreading,” a statement released by the hospital staff read, warning that patients are “at risk of dying at any moment.” Hospital Director Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya told Palestinian media that he received a “clear and direct warning” from the army that he would be arrested.
In a statement, the Israeli army claimed it was operating inside the hospital “following prior intelligence about the presence of militants, terrorist infrastructure, and terrorist activity at the site,” and was “allowing patients and staff at the hospital to evacuate the area in an orderly manner.”
On Thursday, an Israeli airstrike on a building in the vicinity of Kamal Adwan reportedly killed 50 people. Among them were five hospital staffers, according to Dr. Abu Safiya, who spoke with +972 on two occasions this week. “We need the world to understand that this hospital is being deliberately targeted. The people here are not just patients — they are victims of a systematic attempt to destroy our capacity to save lives,” he told +972 on Dec. 23.
“We call on the international community to intervene quickly and open humanitarian corridors to bring in aid and protect the healthcare system, the workers, and the patients.”
The assault on medical facilities in Beit Lahiya is the latest escalation in Israel’s brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, which over the last three months forcibly displaced the vast majority of Palestinians living in the area.