The Israeli military is forcing evacuations of the last two hospitals in northern Gaza, just a week after carrying out a brutal attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital that destroyed and emptied out the facility after Israeli forces had besieged it for months.
On Friday, Israeli forces attacked Al-Awda Hospital, shelling the area around the facility and directly hitting the hospital, reports find. Two medical staff members have reportedly been injured after Israel bombed the hospital’s emergency department, Palestinian journalists reported.
The military then ordered all staff and patients inside the hospital to evacuate, threatening them with bombings if they didn’t comply. There are reportedly 96 patients and staff in the facility.
Earlier, Israeli forces ordered the evacuation of Indonesian Hospital, where many of the workers for Kamal Adwan had gone after Israel shuttered the facility last week.
“Gunfire has been reported around the hospital, where hundreds of vulnerable civilians, including children, women, patients, and medical staff, remain trapped,” Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. “Israeli forces continue to fire in the vicinity of the hospital while ordering the forcible removal of those inside.”
The Israeli military has already been attacking Indonesian Hospital and Al-Awda in its all-out ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza.
Indonesian Hospital has already been rendered mostly inoperational, as Israeli forces have destroyed the oxygen and energy generators at the facility. Al-Awda has also been rendered out of service due to Israel’s assault.
The horrific assault is seemingly part of Israel’s plot to totally empty north Gaza of Palestinians, either through wanton killings or forced evacuations — potentially as a precursor to the Israeli annexation of Gaza, UN experts have warned.
If Israeli forces succeed in emptying the two hospitals, then Israel will have destroyed all of the hospitals left in northern Gaza, after having already rendered them inoperational. This will leave the estimated 75,000 Palestinians trapped in north Gaza, also facing Israeli attacks and bombardments, with nowhere to go for any form of health care.
Israel destroyed and emptied Kamal Adwan, the only major facility left in Gaza with any operational capacity, last week in an assault. Soldiers totally besieged the hospital, detaining staff, including director Hussam Abu Safiya, and forcing other staff and patients to strip their clothes and leave the facility. They also set the facility on fire, potentially burning people alive.
The destruction of the facilities will not just have immediate consequences for the Palestinians left in the region, but also for the health system in Gaza at large. As UNICEF noted this week, 60 percent of neonatal beds in Gaza before the genocide were located in north Gaza — all of which have now been lost due to Israel’s genocidal attacks. At the same time, UNICEF has warned, there are 7,700 newborns in the Gaza Strip who now lack access to life-saving care.
Israel has repeatedly and systematically attacked hospitals in Gaza throughout its genocide, a UN human rights office report found this week. The office verified at least 136 attacks on 27 hospitals across Gaza in just the first eight months of the genocide, and noted that the health care system was already inadequate to meet the needs of the population prior to the genocide, due to conditions set by Israeli occupation authorities.
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