On Friday, Israeli forces raided Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, burning large sections and ordering dozens of patients and hundreds of others to leave, officials said.
Elsewhere in Gaza, medics and the civil emergency service said Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people, including 15 people in one house in Gaza City.
The Gaza Ministry of Health said that contact with staff inside the hospital in Beit Lahia, which has been under intense pressure from Israeli forces for weeks, was cut off.
The ministry’s director, Mounir Al-Barsh, said in a statement, “The occupation forces are now inside the hospital and are burning it.”
The Israeli military said it tried to limit harm to civilians and “facilitated the safe evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel before the operation,” but did not provide details.
She said in a statement that fighters from Hamas, which previously controlled the Gaza Strip, performed surgeries from the hospital throughout the conflict.
Youssef Abu Al-Rish, Hamas-appointed Deputy Minister of Health, said that Israeli forces set fire to the surgery department, laboratory, and warehouse.
like Indonesian And return hospitals Kamal Adwan Medical staff in Gaza said the child was repeatedly attacked by Israeli forces that have been attacking the northern edge of the Gaza Strip for weeks.
Hundreds were ordered to leave the hospital
Burch said the army ordered 350 people to leave Kamal Adwan to a nearby school housing displaced families. Among them were 75 patients and their companions and 185 medical staff.
Abu Al-Rish said that the soldiers were transporting patients and medical staff to the Indonesian hospital, which had stopped operating due to severe damage and had been evacuated by Israeli forces the day before.
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Footage circulated on Arab media, and Reuters was unable to immediately verify its authenticity, showed smoke rising from the Kamal Adwan area.
Much of the area surrounding the northern cities of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia has been depopulated and systematically bulldozed, raising speculation that Israel intends to retain the area as its own. Closed buffer zone After the end of the fighting in Gaza.
Israel denies this and says the goal of its campaign is to prevent Hamas activists from regrouping.
On Thursday, health officials said five medical staff members, including a pediatrician, were killed by Israeli fire in Kamal Adwan. The Israeli army said that it was not aware of the bombing of the hospital and that the death report of the paramedics would be examined.
In a statement, Hamas held Israel and the United States responsible for the fate of the hospital’s occupants.
The Israeli campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Strip. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced, and much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble.
The conflict was sparked by a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage into Gaza, according to Israeli statistics.
