Israel has made the last ICU in north Gaza look like a war zone after striking it with tanks, rendering the unit inoperable as part of the military’s months-long attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital, the facility’s director has said.
On Tuesday, Israeli jets struck numerous buildings in the vicinity of the hospital, killing at least eight people, with many children still trapped under the rubble, according to Kamal Adwan’s director, Hossam Abu Safiya. Then, tanks and bulldozers began closing in on and firing directly at the hospital.
This is when Israeli tank fire hit the only ICU left in the region, sparking a blaze. The hospital staff were able to evacuate the patients and oxygen tanks, but the department was “completely burnt by flames,” said Safiya.
“We were able to extinguish the fire using our hands, as there were no fire extinguishers available and the water supply had been cut off. We used blankets and our bare hands to control the flames,” the doctor said.
“The scene inside the ICU resembled a war zone, with bullets penetrating equipment, walls, and windows,” Safiya went on. “It is incomprehensible why we are being targeted in this way.”
Safiya said that workers had to use some of the little water the hospital has left to help extinguish the fire, even as the facility faces a severe water shortage caused by Israel’s targeting of the water tanks. Israeli forces have also struck the hospital’s oxygen reserves.
There are 71 patients at Kamal Adwan, who are now facing dire shortages after Israel has blocked nearly all supplies from reaching the hospital since early October, Safiya says.
On Saturday, the World Health Organization (WHO) was able to reach the hospital with a delivery of fuel, food and medicine, one of the only shipments that Israeli forces haven’t blocked. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday that, in the previous week, Israel arbitrarily denied four WHO missions to the hospital.
Israeli forces have also denied the deployment of an international emergency medical team to help with dire staff shortages after Israel has targeted, detained and killed many of Kamal Adwan’s staff.
The attacks on Kamal Adwan have been fierce and unending for weeks. The day before the ICU attack, Israeli forces detonated explosives just outside of the hospital, while quadcopters were “continuously dropping bombs,” targeting “anyone who moves,” Safiya reported.
Despite the horrors faced by hospital staff and patients, the U.S. has brushed off Israel’s all-out siege of Kamal Adwan, which threatens to wipe out the hospital and the people inside entirely if it continues at this pace.
In a press conference on Wednesday, State Department Deputy Press Secretary Vedant Patel invoked a debunked Israeli claim about Israel’s targeting of hospitals in order to shield the military from scrutiny over the Kamal Adwan siege.
“I’m not familiar with specific incidents as it relates to this hospital,” Patel said, despite Safiya and humanitarian aid groups’ extensive documentation of the attacks.
“Israel is in a unusual, even unprecedented burdened place in that Hamas has a long track record of using hospitals and schools and other facets of civilian infrastructure for military infrastructure,” Patel went on, ignoring that there is no evidence of Hamas infrastructure within the hospital while also implying that all civilian infrastructure in Gaza is a legitimate military target.
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