Israeli forces struck one of the last functioning hospitals in besieged northern Gaza on Thursday, destroying a stockpile of medical supplies that had been delivered to the facility days ago by the World Health Organization, according to Palestinian officials and news media reports.
The Israeli military said it was “unaware of a strike” on the facility, Kamal Adwan Hospital, but said it was reviewing the reports. Israeli troops withdrew from the hospital on Monday after a three-day raid during which they arrested most of the medical staff, and two children died, Gazan health officials said.
The military said the people it detained in that raid were suspected of being fighters with the militant group Hamas, which led the attack on southern Israel last October that set off the war in Gaza. On Thursday, Israel repeated its claim that Hamas “has embedded terrorist infrastructure and operates within the Kamal Adwan Hospital.”
The Gazan health ministry said that the strike on Thursday had significantly damaged “the remaining medicines and medical supplies” at the hospital, in the northern town of Jabaliya.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyah, the hospital’s director, pleaded for help in a recorded message that was shared on Thursday by Dr. Munir Al Barsh, the director general of the health ministry. In it, Dr. Abu Safiyah asked “anyone with surgical expertise” who might hear the message to immediately report to Kamal Adwan Hospital.
“We currently have no surgeons on site,” he said. “There are children with abdominal shrapnel injuries who need exploratory surgery and bleeding control before it is too late.”
Dr. Al Barsh, the health ministry official, said Israeli forces had also directly fired at the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, another area of northern Gaza that has been struck repeatedly in recent days.
The Israeli military began a major offensive in northern Gaza almost a month ago to combat what it described as a Hamas resurgence in the area. The United States and others have criticized the steep humanitarian toll of the operation.
When the offensive began, Israeli forces ordered three hospitals in the area to evacuate, including Kamal Adwan. But people sheltering in the area said they were penned in by Israeli fire, among roughly 400,000 people that U.N. agencies estimate have been trapped in the area.
This week, Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza, an emergency rescue group, said the Israeli offensive had killed more than 1,000 people in northern Gaza. He did not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The rescue group said that it had “forcibly suspended” its operations across all of northern Gaza because of the offensive, and that the Israeli military had seized its fire trucks, ambulances and other vehicles.
Israeli forces have besieged and raided Kamal Adwan Hospital multiple times since the war began. Its raid last week came a day after the W.H.O. had delivered medical supplies to the facility and agency officials said it was struggling to function. The Israeli military said it had assisted with the W.H.O. deliveries, and with escorting 23 patients and their caregivers to another hospital in the territory.
Israeli forces arrested 44 health care workers at the hospital during the raid the next day, said the W.H.O. director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Israel has long accused Hamas of exploiting hospitals and other civilian infrastructure in Gaza to shield its military operations. It has publicized what it says is evidence that Hamas operates from within hospitals, including by showing reporters a fortified tunnel constructed underneath the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
An investigation by The New York Times suggested that Hamas had used the Shifa Hospital for cover and stored weapons there. But the Israeli military has struggled to prove its assertion that Hamas maintained a command-and-control center under that hospital complex.
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