“Israel” Burns Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, Director’s Fate Unknown

By Staff, Agencies

The fate of the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, Hussam Abu Safiya, and some of the medical staff there, is still unknown as “Israeli” occupation forces [IOF] conducted on Friday a harrowing assault the hospital.

According to reports, five of the hospital’s sections went on fire after raiding it, abducting patients and medical staff, and forcing them to strip.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said that the fire had begun spreading to all buildings of the hospital, adding that the occupation forces burned the operations and surgery sections, as well as the laboratory, maintenance, and emergency units.

Meanwhile, a number of patients and wounded people, who were in Kamal Adwan Hospital, arrived in Gaza City on foot.

In an alarming escalation, the IOF launched an airstrike in the vicinity of the hospital, after storming its premises and forcibly displacing 300 patients. Many of these patients, who were dependent on life-saving medical devices, were left in the open, exposed to the harsh cold, further endangering their fragile health.

This comes as a group of medical staff and patients went to the Indonesian Hospital and were shocked to see it was no longer operational, pointing out that there remained 25 patients unable to move inside Kamal Adwan Hospital.

Since the beginning of the “Israeli” aggression on Gaza, 1,056 medical staff have been martyred, and nearly 350 medical personnel are now prisoners in occupation prisons.

Moreover, the “Israeli” occupation removed more than 300 patients and wounded from the hospital despite their severe health conditions.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said  that the IOF forced medical staff and patients to take off their clothes and took them out of the hospital to an unknown location.

The provision of health services in the northern Gaza Strip has stopped, according to the Ministry of Health, which confirmed that "we are facing a major deficit in the clinical capacity of hospitals in the Gaza Strip."

The Ministry of Health indicated that the IOF burned buildings in Kamal Adwan Hospital and destroyed all electrical generators