ShareCAIRO/JERUSALEM: Zionist forces detained dozens of medical staff from a north Gaza hospital after they stormed the facility and set it on fire on Friday, the enclave’s health ministry said. The Zionist military raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya on Friday, ordering dozens of patients and hundreds of others to evacuate and detaining medical staff including the facility’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya.
The Health Ministry said it was not clear what was happening to Abu Safiya, adding it was concerned about his well-being after some of the staff freed by the army late on Friday reported that he was beaten up by soldiers.
Kuwait condemned the heinous crime the Zionist occupation forces committed by burning down Kamal Adwan hospital in north Gaza, which resulted in the evacuation of patients and medical staff, in a grave breach of international humanitarian law and all international conventions and norms.
In a statement on Saturday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs renewed Kuwait’s call on the international community to end such violations immediately, bring perpetrators to accountability, and protect civilian properties and medical and humanitarian aid staff. The assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital has rendered the facility “useless”, further worsening Gaza’s severe health crisis, the Palestinian territory’s health officials said.
The World Health Organization said the operation had put the “last major health facility in north Gaza out of service”. “Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid,” it added in a statement on X.
The WHO said 60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition, including some on ventilators, reportedly remained in the hospital. The raid on the hospital, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza, put the last major health facility in north Gaza out of service, the World Health Organization said in a post on X. Some patients were evacuated to the Indonesian Hospital, which is not in service, and medics were prevented from joining them there, the Health Ministry said. Some others were transferred to another hospital in the southern Gaza Strip. Some of the freed medical staff arrived at the Al-Ahly Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza City.
The Zionist entity military said on Friday that Hamas fighters had operated from Kamal Adwan Hospital throughout the 15-month-old war and had made the site a key stronghold. Hamas dismissed this as “lies”, saying there were no fighters in the hospital. The Gaza Health Ministry also said Zionist entity strikes across the enclave killed 18 Palestinians on Saturday, at least nine of them in a house in Maghazi camp in central Gaza Strip. The Zionist entity military said on Saturday it had begun operating overnight against targets in the Beit Hanoun area in northern Gaza. “Troops are enabling civilians still in the area to move away for their own safety,” it said. In the past few months Zionist entity forces have pushed people out and razed much of the area around the northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya. Palestinians have accused Zionist entity of carrying out ethnic cleansing by depopulating those areas to create a buffer zone. Zionist entity denies it is doing this, saying it aims to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping in these areas.
Zionist entity’s campaign against Hamas, which previously controlled Gaza, has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, 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.
One of the Gazans evacuated from the hospital, who asked to be identified only as Mohammad for security reasons, told AFP some evacuees were interrogated about Hamas. “As we began to exit, the army asked all young men to take off their clothes and walk outside the hospital,” said Mohammad, whose brother was a patient there. “They (soldiers) took tens of young men, as well as physicians and patients, to an unknown place... The young men were interrogated, they were asked about resistance fighters, Hamas and weapons.”
Ammar Al-Barsh, a resident of Jabalia where the military has focused its assault in recent weeks, said the raid on Kamal Adwan and its environs had left dozens of homes in the area in ruins. “The situation is catastrophic, there is no medical service, no ambulances and no civil defense in the north,” Barsh, 50, told AFP.
The army “continues to raid the Kamal Adwan Hospital and the surrounding houses, and we hear gunfire from Zionist entity drones and artillery shelling”, he added.
In the days leading up to the raid, Abu Safiya had repeatedly warned about the hospital’s precarious situation, accusing Zionist entity forces of targeting the facility. On Monday, he issued a statement accusing Zionist entity of targeting the hospital “with the intent to kill and forcibly displace the people inside”. – Agencies
