One of the last operating hospitals in north Gaza has been burned after the patients inside were forcibly removed.
Israeli troops stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital, which has already been hit multiple times in recent months as Israel continues their offensive against Hamas fighters.
Israel’s military said it was conducting operations against Hamas infrastructure and fighters in the area of the hospital and repeated claims that Hamas fighters were ‘operating inside’ the hospital.
The local Health Ministry said troops forced medical personnel and patients to assemble in the hospital yard and remove their clothes in the cold.
Troops then set fires in the hospital’s lab and surgery department.
One staff member posted an audio message where she recalled: ‘Fire is ablaze everywhere in the hospital. There are currently patients who could die at any moment.’
The Israeli rights group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel earlier this week petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice seeking a halt to military attacks on Kamal Adwan.
It warned that forcibly evacuating the hospital would ‘abandon thousands of residents in northern Gaza.’
Before the latest deaths on Thursday, the group documented five other staffers killed by Israeli fire since October.
Since October, Israel’s offensive has virtually sealed off the north Gaza areas of Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and levelled large parts of the districts.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians were forced out, but thousands are believed to remain in the area, where Kamal Adwan and two other hospitals are located.
Troops raided Kamal Adwan earlier in October, and on Tuesday troops stormed and evacuated the nearby Indonesian Hospital.
The area has been cut off from food and other aid for months, raising fears of famine. The UN says Israeli troops had only allowed four humanitarian deliveries to the area from December 1-23.
Israel’s nearly 15-month-old campaign of bombardment and offensives in Gaza has devastated the territory’s health sector.
A year ago, it carried out a wave of raids on hospitals in northern Gaza, including Kamal Adwan, Indonesian and nearby al-Awda Hospital, saying they served as bases for Hamas.
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More than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have been driven from their homes, most of them now sheltering in sprawling, squalid tent camps in south and central Gaza.
Israel launched its campaign vowing to destroy Hamas after the group’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted some 250 others.
Around 100 Israelis remain captive in Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.
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