Israeli Strikes Damage a Major Hospital in Northern Gaza, Officials Say

Israeli bombardment damaged an already crippled major hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, injuring medical staff and patients, local officials said, a week after Israeli forces withdrew from the complex and detained dozens of people, including medical workers.

The Israelis “continue to bomb and destroy Kamal Adwan Hospital” in Jabaliya, a densely populated city just north of Gaza City, the Gazan health ministry said on Monday, in a statement it titled “a distress call that may be the last.” The bombardment affected all the hospital facilities, caused “many” injuries among medical staff and patients and prevented medical staff from moving between departments to treat their injured colleagues, it said.

The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh, said in an interview with the Al Jazeera that the hospital had come under continuous shelling for at least three hours on Monday. “I can’t leave the floor I am in,” he said. “I was told a few of our medical teams have been injured on other floors but no one can reach them,” he added.

Both he and the health ministry said the hospital was targeted directly. It was not clear what kinds of munitions were used.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports coming from the hospital, but could not immediately comment. In a statement on Monday, the military said that it had facilitated the evacuation of patients and staff from Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda Hospital, in Nuseirat, to other hospitals in northern Gaza on Sunday, and provided the hospitals with humanitarian aid. The statement did not say why the hospitals were evacuated.

In the past, Israeli officials have said that hospitals were damaged in strikes on targets nearby, or in attacks aimed at Hamas fighters operating from within hospital grounds or tunnels beneath them, allegations that hospital administrators have denied. Gazans and human rights groups have accused Israel of deliberately destroying the enclave’s vital infrastructure, including health care facilities, which Israeli officials have denied.