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The last major health facility in northern Gaza has been put out of service, the World Health Organization has said, and its director detained according to Gaza officials after an Israeli military operation targeting sites near the Kamal Adwan hospital.
“Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid,” the WHO said in a statement on X.
Israel’s military said in a statement that the hospital had become a “key stronghold for terrorist organisations and continues to be used as a hideout for terrorist operatives” since Israeli forces began broader operations in northern Gaza in October.
The WHO said 60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition, including those on ventilators, reportedly remained in the hospital. The patients in moderate to severe condition were forced to evacuate to the destroyed and non-functional Indonesian hospital, the UN health agency said, adding that it was “deeply concerned for their safety”.
Kamal Adwan hospital and the surrounding area has been under increased attack this week, according to the hospital’s director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who said five medical staff were killed in a strike on Thursday.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said in a statement on Saturday that Israeli forces had taken Abu Safiya and dozens of medical staff from the hospital to a detention centre. The Gaza civil defence agency also said Abu Safiyeh had been detained.
He had earlier posted on Instagram: “The occupation army is burning all the operating departments in the hospital while we are still there. The army evacuated the entire medical staff and the displaced people and arrested a number of the medical staff. There are a large number of injuries among the medical staff.” Much of the hospital building and equipment was damaged, he added.
Eid Sabbah, the head of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan, told the Guardian that Israeli forces raided the courtyards of the hospital with tanks and bulldozers. He said they were given only 15 minutes to clear the hospital. “We do not know the fate of most of the staff, patients and their companions, or the direction the occupation army took them in,” said Sabbah. He said some were taken to a nearby wedding hall and al-Fakhoura school.
In a voice message shared by Abu Safiya, a member of the medical staff said: “We currently don’t know what will happen to us, the patients are being forcibly evacuated to the Indonesian hospital. They cut the oxygen from them, there are patients who [could] die at any moment.”
Unverified video footage from the hospital’s vicinity showed a group of men in their underwear walking past Israeli troops.
Kamal Adwan hospital has been working under siege since October, when Israeli forces began a third military operation in the Jabaliya refugee camp that involved the mass demolition of buildings and infrastructure.
Over the past week, Abu Safiya has described an intensified siege of the hospital, sharing videos of quadcopter drones dropping explosives in the vicinity. He said a strike on a nearby building killed 50 people on Thursday – among them two paramedics, a paediatrician, a lab technician and a hospital maintenance worker.
The Israel Defense Forces said it was examining the claim that five medical staff were killed but said it disputed the number of reported casualties in the area.
“The IDF operates against terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area of Jabaliya and continued its operations over the last day. The IDF is unaware of strikes in the area of the Kamal Adwan hospital,” they said.
The Israeli military said in a statement that Kamal Adwan hospital served as a Hamas terrorist stronghold and that it had made efforts to mitigate harm to civilians and had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel prior to the operation”.
Elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people, including 15 people in a single house in Gaza City, medics and the civil emergency service said.
Much of the area around the northern towns of Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and systematically razed, fuelling speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.
Israel says its campaign is to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping but that it will retain full security control of Gaza after the war.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians, according to health officials in the territory. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.