The director of north Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital and the territory’s civil defence agency said Israel conducted several strikes on Friday that hit the facility, one of the last functioning health centres in the area.
“There was a series of air strikes on the northern and western sides ofthe hospital, accompanied by intense and direct fire,” Hossam Abu Safieh said, adding that four staff were killed and no surgeons were left at the site.
The Israeli army has not yet responded to AFP requests for comment on the strikes.
Mahmud Bassal, Gaza’s civil defence spokesman, told AFP on Friday morning that the Israeli army entered Kamal Adwan hospital, evacuated patients and arrested several Palestinians.
The city of Beit Lahia has been the site of an intense Israeli military operation for the past two months that has intensified in recent days, forcing thousands to flee amid bombing, the civil defence agency said.
The Israeli army has stormed Kamal Adwan on several occasions since the start of the war nearly 14 months ago, while the hospital said that its intensive care unit director Ahmad al-Kahlut was killed in an air strike late last month.
The army’s storming of Kamal Adwan comes just days after the UN’s World Health Organization said an emergency medical team had reached it for the first time in 60 days.
With little to no aid reaching Kamal Adwan since the start of the Israeli operation in Gaza’s far north in early October, the hospital had run out of most supplies, including fuel.
The Israeli army says its operation in the north aims to keep Hamas militants from regrouping there.
Rights groups have accused it of pursuing a plan to evacuate or starve all those remaining there, which it denies.
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said on Thursday that residents of the north would not be allowed to move back there as long as the military operations are ongoing.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s surprise October 7, 2023 attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has resulted in at least 44,580 deaths, mostly civilians, according to data from the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.
