Major Gaza hospital shut after Israeli raid, officials say

GAZA BELT —

An Israeli military operation targeting Hamas militants has forced a major hospital in northern Gaza to shut down and led to the detention of its director, the World Health Organization and health officials said Saturday.

The attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital has rendered the facility “useless”, further exacerbating Gaza’s serious health crisis, Palestinian territory health officials said.

“This morning’s raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital put this last major health facility in northern Gaza out of action. Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burned and destroyed during the raid,” the World Health Organization said overnight on X, citing Israeli an operation that began in the early hours of Friday morning.

The WHO said 60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition, including some on ventilators, reportedly remain in hospital.

Patients in moderate to serious condition were forced to evacuate to a destroyed Indonesian hospital that was not functioning, the UN health agency said, adding that it was “deeply concerned for their safety”.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported that Israeli forces arrested the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hossam Abu Safiyeh, along with several medical staff members.

The Gaza Civil Defense Agency said Abu Safiyeh was detained along with its northern Gaza chief, Ahmed Hassan al-Kahlout.

The Israeli army has not commented on the arrests.

In the days leading up to the raid, Abu Safiyeh repeatedly warned of the uncertain situation at the hospital, accusing Israeli forces of targeting the facility.

On Monday, he issued a statement accusing Israel of targeting the hospital “with the intention of killing and forcibly displacing the people inside.”

On Thursday, Abu Safiyeh said five hospital staff were killed in an Israeli attack near the facility.

Since October 6, Israel has intensified its ground and air offensive in northern Gaza, saying it aims to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping.

The military said on Friday that it was acting on intelligence about “terrorist infrastructure and operatives” near the hospital.

‘Heinous crime’

Before launching the latest operation near the hospital, the army said its troops “enabled the safe evacuation of civilians, patients and medical staff”.

Hamas has denied claims that its operatives were present at the hospital, accusing Israeli forces of storming the hospital on Friday.

“The enemy’s lies about the hospital are intended to justify the heinous crime committed today by the occupying army, including the evacuation and burning of all hospital wards as part of a plan for extermination and forced displacement,” Hamas said in a statement.

The Gaza Ministry of Health earlier quoted Abu Safiyeh as reporting that the army “set fire to all the surgery departments in the hospital”.

Abu Safiyeh said the army also “evacuated all medical staff and displaced people.”

There is a large number of injured among the medical team.

Iran, which backs Hamas, “strongly condemned the brutal attack,” with a foreign ministry statement calling it “the latest example of war crimes, crimes against humanity, grave violations of international law and norms.”

Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Great Britain, the European Union and others. The Israeli military has regularly accused Hamas of using hospitals as command and control centers for attacks on its forces during the war.

Hamas has denied the accusations.

The WHO reiterated its call for a ceasefire.

“This incursion into Kamal Adwan Hospital comes after escalating restrictions on access to WHO and partners and repeated attacks on or near the facility since early October,” WHO said.

“Such hostilities and raids nullify all our efforts and support to keep the facility minimally functional. The systematic breakdown of the health system in Gaza is a death sentence for tens of thousands of Palestinians in need of health care.”

Meanwhile, Hamas’ media center reported “massive Israeli air and artillery attacks on Beit Hanoun,” in northern Gaza.

Israel’s military says it has killed hundreds of militants since an intensified offensive in northern Gaza began on October 6, while rescuers in the area say thousands of civilians have died in the all-out offensive.

The Gaza Civil Defense also reported that at least nine Palestinians were killed in a separate Israeli attack in central Gaza on Saturday.

The war in Gaza was triggered by a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 last year, which left 1,208 dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 45,436 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.