Israeli military kills four doctors in raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, eyewitnesses say
Israeli troops also forced health care workers and patients to leave the facility, and destroyed critical medical supplies, according to a statement by Dr Hussam Abu Saifya, the hospital director.
In the early hours of Friday, the Israeli military sent two plain clothed messengers into the hospital, who told people over a megaphone to evacuate, Abu Saifya added. The military detained a “large number” of young men in the two-hour raid, including health workers and Palestinians who had sought refuge, added Abu Saifya.
Israeli quadcopters unleashed a blaze of “intense and direct fire” as military vehicles encircled the facility, Abu Saifya recalled, before corralling patients, displaced people and health workers in the courtyard and forcibly taking them to a checkpoint further south, towards Gaza City.
“Initially, there was a series of airstrikes on the northern and western sides of the hospital, accompanied by intense and direct fire,” Abu Saifya said in a statement on Friday. “They approached me and ordered me to evacuate all patients, displaced persons, and medical staff, gathering everyone in the hospital’s courtyard and forcibly taking them to the checkpoint.
“In the morning, we were shocked to see hundreds of bodies and wounded individuals in the streets surrounding the hospital,” the doctor added. “The situation is catastrophic in northern Gaza, particularly in the vicinity of Kamal Adwan Hospital.”
Members of an Indonesian medical delegation – the only team performing surgery at Kamal Adwan – were among those forced to leave and not allowed to return, according to Abu Saifya.
Hours later, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrew from one of the last remaining functioning facilities in northern Gaza. Hospital staffers and patients left the facility to find hundreds of bodies and wounded people lining surrounding streets, Abu Saifya added.
“IDF troops continue to operate against terror infrastructure and terrorists in the Jabaliya area, including adjacent to the Kamal Adwan Hospital,” it said. “Simultaneously, in recent weeks, coordinated efforts with international organizations have been underway in order to transfer patients, companions, and medical staff to other hospitals which are operating in the Gaza Strip.”
The statement added that the IDF is in “continuous contact” with Kamal Adwan to deliver supplies and equipment. According to COGAT, the Israeli agency that manages policy for the Palestinian territories and the flow of aid into the strip, 161 aid trucks entered Gaza on December 4.
There was no official evacuation order ahead of the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital, according to a United Nations official. “People started to climb the wall to escape, and this panic attracted IDF fire,” the UN health’s agency representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Rik Peeperkorn, said on Friday.
Human rights agencies have repeatedly accused Israel of subjecting residents in parts of northern Gaza to relocation or starvation. Since October, 2023, 58% of 273 missions led by the UN’s World Health Organization were denied, canceled or impeded, the agency said on Friday.
‘All forms of killing and violence’
The attack on Friday was the second such raid by the Israeli military since forces sprung an incursion on three cities in northern Gaza on October 5, razing entire streets, spawning severe hunger and leaving emergency crews unable to rescue people wounded by the onslaught.
The Israeli military has said the assault is targeting Hamas’ renewed presence there. More than 3,700 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO). Another 10,000 people have been injured, the GMO said on Monday.
At least 30 people were killed by Israeli bombing on houses around Kamal Adwan overnight, according to Dr Munir Al Bursh, the director general of the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
In another clip filmed outside the hospital, dozens of men could be seen looking around helplessly, and trying to lift wounded people heaped under thick layers of debris.
At least 1,050 health workers have been killed since Israel launched its war in Gaza after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, according to the Ministry of Health in Ramallah. The Israeli military launched a renewed incursion on three cities in northern Gaza on October 5, saying it is targeting Hamas’ renewed presence in the area.
“Kamal Adwan Hospital is now being subjected to a new war crime, and the occupation forces are practicing all forms of killing and violence in it and around it,” the health ministry in Ramallah said on Friday. “The remaining wounded inside it are suffering from severe wounds and are in immediate need of treatment.
“For more than a year, the ministry has been appealing on a daily basis to provide protection for treatment centers, health cadres, ambulance crews and vehicles and volunteer medical teams, to stop the aggression, and to allow the entry of urgent medical supplies and the exit of the wounded for treatment.”
Reporting contributed by Belal Mortaja.