Israel forcefully evacuates Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza and arrests medical staff

The Israeli army forcefully evacuated the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza on Friday after dozens of people were killed in Israeli raids targeting the area.

Gaza health officials said on Saturday that medical staff, including hospital director Kamal Adwan, had also been arrested.

The director of the hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, was one of the first to report that about 50 people were killed in the Israeli air strikes that targeted the vicinity of the hospital on Friday.

The Israeli military said it was carrying out an operation in the area, claiming that the hospital was a “Hamas terrorist stronghold.”

On Friday, patients in the hospital were forcibly transferred to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which doctors warned was damaged and unsuitable due to a lack of power generators and water.

Eid Sabah, head of Kamal Adwan’s nursing department, told the BBC that the army ordered the evacuation at around 07:00 on Friday, giving the hospital about 15 minutes to move patients and staff to the courtyard.

He added that Israeli forces then entered the hospital and removed the remaining patients.

The Israeli military said it “facilitated the safe evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel” before the operation began.

Seriously ill patients were transferred to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, which had been evacuated earlier in the week and which paramedics described as non-functional.

Gaza’s Deputy Health Minister, Dr. Abu Al-Rish, told the BBC on Friday: “It cannot be called a hospital. It is more like a shelter. It is not equipped for patients.”

Dr. Sabah from Kamal Adwan Hospital said: “The matter is dangerous because there are patients in the intensive care department who are in a coma and need ventilators, and transporting them exposes them to danger.”

He had said that seriously ill patients needed to be transported in specialized vehicles.

The World Health Organization said the raid “put the last major health facility in northern Gaza out of service.”

“Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burned and destroyed during the raid,” she posted on X on Friday.

Nadav Shoshani, the international spokesman for the Israeli army, said in a post on Friday evening on Channel X, “A small fire broke out in an empty building inside the hospital and is under control.”

He said that this happened when the Israeli army forces were not inside the hospital, adding that “after the initial examination, no connection was found between the Israeli army activity and the fire.”

The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital said on Friday that about 50 people were martyred, including five medical staff, in a series of Israeli air strikes that targeted the hospital’s vicinity.

Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya’s statement said that Israeli warplanes targeted a building opposite the hospital, which led to the martyrdom of a pediatrician, a laboratory technician, and their families.

He said that a third employee, working as a maintenance technician, was targeted and killed while rushing to the site of the first strike.

The statement continued that two hospital paramedics were 500 meters (1,640 feet) away from the hospital when they were targeted and killed in another raid, and their bodies remained in the street without anyone being able to reach them.

The Israeli army said on Friday morning that it was “not aware of strikes in the Kamal Adwan Hospital area” and that it was looking into reports that medical staff had been killed.

Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia has been under a tight Israeli blockade imposed on parts of northern Gaza since October, when the army said it launched an attack to prevent Hamas from regrouping there.

The UN said the area is under an “almost total siege” with the Israeli military severely restricting the arrival of aid shipments to an area inhabited by an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people.

In recent days, hospital administrators have issued desperate pleas for protection, saying the facility has become a regular target of Israeli bombing and explosives.

Oxfam said attempts by aid agencies to deliver supplies to the area since October had failed due to “deliberate delay and systematic obstruction” by the Israeli military.

Additional reporting by Shaima Khalil