Northern Gaza’s Last Major Hospital Damaged, Evacuated Amid Israeli Raid
The Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, the last remaining major hospital in the area, is now out of service after a raid by Israeli forces. The hospital was severely damaged, and its wards were emptied of patients and doctors. The United Nations estimates that the hospital’s closure puts some 75,000 Palestinians in the north of the enclave at risk.
The Israeli military raided the hospital on Friday, arresting the hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, and accusing him of being a suspected “Hamas terrorist operative.” The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the hospital is now “empty” of patients, some of whom are critically ill. Those in critical condition were transferred to the Indonesian Hospital, which is also out of function, or to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
The UN is planning a mission to the Indonesian Hospital to move the evacuated patients to southern Gaza for continued care. However, the health system in the north is “completely deteriorated,” according to Dr. Mohammed Salha, director of Al Awda Hospital in northern Gaza. His hospital is barely functioning and severely damaged due to recent airstrikes.
The raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital came amid renewed Israeli aerial and ground operations in several parts of northern Gaza, aimed at targeting what the IDF called a resurgent Hamas presence in the area. The onslaught has left streets as carpets of debris, killed entire families, and severely depleted food, water, and medical stocks.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that the hospital was being used as a “Hamas terror stronghold” and that it had detained at least 240 “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists” around the hospital. However, the IDF did not provide any evidence to support the claims.
The closure of Kamal Adwan Hospital has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where aid is barely reaching the few hundred thousand Palestinians still trapped in the area. Since October 6, when Israel’s concentrated operation in the north began, 5,565 truckloads of aid have entered the enclave, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). However, since December 1, Israeli authorities have denied 48 of 52 UN attempts to coordinate humanitarian access to northern Gaza.
The situation in Gaza is dire, with food shortages, lack of shelter, and medicine. The cold weather has also compounded the crisis, with a 20-day-old newborn dying from the cold, the fifth in the last week. A surgeon in Gaza, Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, warned that hypothermia, malnutrition, and injury represent the triad of death in Gaza, where people will die of hypothermia at higher temperatures, will starve to death much quicker, and will succumb to less severe wounds.