THE Palestinian Ministry of Health said yesterday that the Israeli occupation army had burned Kamal Adwan Hospital – the last operating hospital in northern Gaza – setting fire to several parts of the hospital, including the surgery departments, the laboratory, maintenance, ambulance units and warehouses. The fire has now spread to all buildings.
The Hamas ministry explained in a statement that the occupation army is forcibly transferring patients and the injured at gunpoint to the Indonesian Hospital, which lacks medical supplies, water, medicines, and even electricity and generators.
It warned that there are many patients who are at risk of death at any moment. It confirmed that the hospital director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, received a clear direct threat, as Israeli troops told him: ‘This time we will arrest you.’ Earlier in the day, Israeli occupation forces stormed the hospital, forcing patients and medical staff to assemble in its courtyard before forcing them to head to Al-Fakhoura School.
There, they interrogated them, forced the men to take off their clothes, arrested a number of them, and ordered a number of patients to head to the Indonesian Hospital, which lacks any capabilities.
For its part, the Hamas movement said the fascist occupation army’s burning of the Martyr Kamal Adwan Hospital after storming it and abusing the patients, the wounded, the displaced and medical staff inside it, is a flagrant war crime and a blatant violation of international laws and humanitarian values. The Hamas Movement has called for the sending of UN observers to Gaza’s remaining hospitals to refute Israel’s lies and claims that they are used for military purposes.
‘The criminal Zionist occupation army’s systematic targeting and destruction of medical facilities and hospitals – the latest example of which was the burning and bombing of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza – places a historical responsibility on the shoulders of the UN and the international community for their failure to stop the war of extermination and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people,’ Hamas said in a statement on Saturday.
Hamas urged the UN and relevant international organisations to urgently intervene to protect the remaining hospitals and medical facilities in northern Gaza and provide them with their needs.
Palestinian medical sources said on Saturday that a number of medical personnel at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza were burnt to death by the fires that were set by Israeli soldiers in the compound.
According to medical and media sources, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) set fire to different premises of the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital after storming it and ordering medical staff, patients and caregivers to evacuate the facility under intensive gunfire and shelling in the area.
A nurse working at the hospital told Al-Jazeera satellite channel on Friday that Israeli soldiers stormed the facility, set fire to its contents, beat and maltreated members of the medical crew, and forced them to leave it.
She added that the IOF kidnapped several medical personnel, patients, and civilians along with the director of the hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, and took them to an unknown location.
Meanwhile, eyewitnesses who were displaced from the area reported that Israeli soldiers executed a number of detainees in the neighbourhoods around the hospital.
A member of Hamas’s political bureau Osama Hamdan said that the Israeli occupation army’s destruction of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is part of the Israeli ‘Generals’ Plan’ and was also aimed at ending the steadfastness of the Palestinians living in the area.
The ‘Generals’ Plan’ is a siege and forced evacuation policy for northern Gaza which has been outlined by former Israeli general Giora Eiland, and is now being executed on the ground by the Israeli occupation army.
In press remarks on Friday, Hamdan affirmed that there were no gunmen at the Kamal Adwan Hospital, pointing out that the hospital had been under attack and siege for 75 days.
Hamdan accused the Israeli occupation government of obstructing the efforts to reach a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal, stressing that Benjamin Netanyahu wants to get rid of the Israeli captives through killing them.
To date, the occupation has refused to cease fire completely and withdraw from Gaza. ‘We have put forward an initiative that includes a comprehensive ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal, but Israel has rebuffed it,’ Hamdan said.
He added that his movement already agreed to a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, but the Israeli government did not accept that.
The working class in the UK, the EU and the USA must now take general strike action to support Palestine. Enough is enough! Now is the time for the working class of the world to take general strike action to liberate Palestine from the Zionist occupation and its allies!
