Hamas says Israel’s attack on last hospital in northern Gaza ‘war crime’

Israeli soldiers have stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, torching large sections and ordering hundreds of people to leave.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Friday that contact had been lost with staff inside the hospital in Beit Lahiya, which has been under siege and heavy pressure from Israeli forces for weeks. It had no information on the fate of patients who were inside, it added.

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

The Israeli army has throughout its assault on Gaza routinely besieged and attacked medical facilities – housing both patients and displaced families.

Youssef Abu el-Rish, Gaza’s deputy health minister, stated that Israeli forces had set fire to the surgical department, laboratory and a storehouse in the hospital.

The fire then “spread to all buildings” in the medical complex, according to a separate statement by the enclave’s Health Ministry.

It said Kamal Adwan is “suffering from a stifling siege, as the operating and surgery departments, laboratory, maintenance, ambulance units and warehouses have been completely burned”.

The ministry added that all generators in the facility had been destroyed.

“The [Israeli] occupation army is forcibly transferring patients and the injured under the threat of weapons and gun barrels to the Indonesian Hospital, which lacks medical supplies, water, medicines, and even electricity and generators.”

Like the Indonesian and al-Awda hospitals, Kamal Adwan has been repeatedly attacked by Israeli forces, especially after they launched a renewed ground offensive in the area more than two months ago. The north, where a famine is looming, has been under total siege and cut off from the rest of the Strip since then.

Al-Bursh stressed that the Israeli army had ordered 350 people to leave Kamal Adwan for a nearby school sheltering displaced families. This included 75 patients, their companions, and 185 medical staff.

Footage circulating on local media showed smoke rising from the area of Kamal Adwan Hospital.

Much of the area around the northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and systematically razed, prompting speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone.

On Thursday, health officials noted that five medical staff, including a paediatrician, were killed by Israeli fire at Kamal Adwan.

In a statement, Hamas blamed Israel and the United States for the fate of the hospital’s occupants.

“The [Israeli] occupation government is committing crimes in Gaza, relying on American cover and some Western capitals that are partners in the ongoing genocide,” it announced on Telegram.

Israel’s aggression has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians since October last year, according to health officials in the enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.