Over the weekend, the Israeli army besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the last operating in northern Gaza, arresting dozens of doctors. A military statement released Monday said “soldiers captured around 100 terrorists from the center, including some who were trying to escape during the evacuation of civilians.”
“After the arrest and expulsion of all medical staff from Kamal Adwan, only one pediatrician remained in the hospital among all specialties,” Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Monday, which asked all those with knowledge of surgery to join the hospital.
Health authorities said Friday that 600 people were hospitalized, including doctors, patients and caregivers. “Two children died in intensive care when the generators stopped. Three ambulances and transport vehicles were destroyed, as well as the solar panel. “The occupying forces are searching the hospital and shooting in several departments, thus increasing the state of panic and anxiety. »
The army said the operation took place after receiving intelligence that “terrorists were hiding in Jabalia hospital” and that the army had coordinated with the hospital to protect patients and ensure electricity and oxygen supply. “Inside the hospital, they found weapons, terrorist funds and intelligence documents,” the army says.
The Israel Defense Forces also released video of an interrogation of an ambulance driver who told his interrogator that Hamas was present at the hospital.
“The smell of death has spread throughout the hospital,” Marwan al-Hams, director of field hospitals at the Gaza Health Ministry, told Al Jazeera on Saturday. Doctors at the center, according to the Qatari network, then reported that at least 44 of the hospital’s 70 doctors had been detained. Fourteen of them were subsequently released, including the director of the center.
“A critical shortage of medical supplies, compounded by very limited access, is depriving people of life-saving care,” WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in X.
A nurse testified that soldiers surrounded the hospital Saturday morning. “They evacuated everyone who was taking refuge here. They separated the men from the women and formed two lines. “It was very humiliating for our men to see their clothes confiscated,” he told Al Jazeera.
According to the medical center’s spokesperson, this weekend’s siege is the 14th attack on the hospital so far in the offensive. The UN special rapporteur on health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, on Friday used the concept of “medicine” to refer to Israeli attacks on the health system in Gaza.
