Israeli bombardment damaged an already crippled major hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, injuring medical staff and patients, local officials said, a week after Israeli forces withdrew from the complex and detained dozens of people, including medical workers.
The Israelis “continue to bomb and destroy Kamal Adwan Hospital” in Jabaliya, a densely populated city just north of Gaza City, the Gazan health ministry said on Monday, in a statement it titled “a distress call that may be the last.” The bombardment affected all the hospital facilities, caused “many” injuries among medical staff and patients and prevented medical staff from moving between departments to treat their injured colleagues, it said.
The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh, said in an interview with the Al Jazeera that the hospital had come under continuous shelling for at least three hours on Monday. “I can’t leave the floor I am in,” he said. “I was told a few of our medical teams have been injured on other floors but no one can reach them,” he added.
Both he and the health ministry said the hospital was targeted directly. It was not clear what kinds of munitions were used.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports coming from the hospital, but could not immediately comment. In a statement on Monday, the military said that it had facilitated the evacuation of patients and staff from Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda Hospital, in Nuseirat, to other hospitals in northern Gaza on Sunday, and provided the hospitals with humanitarian aid. The statement did not say why the hospitals were evacuated.
In the past, Israeli officials have said that hospitals were damaged in strikes on targets nearby, or in attacks aimed at Hamas fighters operating from within hospital grounds or tunnels beneath them, allegations that hospital administrators have denied. Gazans and human rights groups have accused Israel of deliberately destroying the enclave’s vital infrastructure, including health care facilities, which Israeli officials have denied.
Kamal Adwan is one of the few hospitals in northern Gaza that is still functioning, but at a bare-bones level; Dr. Abu Safiyeh said only three doctors remain there. More than a year of missile, bomb and artillery strikes and raids by ground forces have forced evacuations and badly damaged the territory’s hospitals, leaving many nonfunctioning and others with only minimal operations.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that Israeli forces had attacked the hospital’s third floor, where its remaining medical supplies were stored, causing great damage.
The Israeli military said that an explosive device was detonated on Sunday near Kamal Adwan as a United Nations convoy passed by, hitting it with shrapnel and wounding six children who were inside the hospital and damaging the building.
The Israeli military withdrew last week from Kamal Adwan after a three-day raid during which Palestinian health officials said nearly all the medical workers at the complex were detained and two children died. The military said that it detained nearly 100 people from the hospital who they said were suspected of being militants.
The hospital raid came after weeks of an intense Israeli offensive into three areas of northern Gaza, including Jabaliya. Israel said it renewed its military offensive in the northern part of the enclave to target what it said was a regrouped Hamas presence in the area.
Palestinians who have remained in those areas, as well as the United Nations, aid groups and Gazan health authorities, have said that the Israeli raid was causing widespread devastation and killing hundreds of civilians.
Dr. Abu Safiyeh said Kamal Adwan’s staff had moved all of its child patients and premature babies to the ground floor, which was not equipped to receive such cases. Nearly 90 wounded patients remain at the hospital, he said.
“The military did not call and ask for anything,” Dr. Abu Safiyeh told Al Jazeera. “We don’t know why this shelling is taking place,” he added.
The Palestinian civil defense said in a statement on Monday that its emergency and rescue teams were “forcibly disabled” from all areas of northern Gaza because of the “ongoing targeting and Israeli aggression,” leaving thousands there “without humanitarian and medical care.”
The Gazan health ministry said on Sunday that many wounded people and dead bodies were left in the streets of northern Gaza and under its rubble, with ambulances unable to recover them.
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