The director of one of the remaining hospitals in northern Gaza warned Monday that premature newborns are among those who could perish if the facility complies with Israeli evacuation demands.
But according to Dr. Husam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, simply remaining there puts 400 people—including patients, medical staff, and civilians providing shelter—at risk.
Tanks and bulldozers surrounded the hospital’s western gates during the weekend, according to Abu Safiya, and the Beit Latiya facility was the target of constant, intense bombardment.
In a statement posted on WhatsApp, he said that bullets had entered the specialist surgery department, the maternity unit, and the acute care unit.
Gaza’s Health Ministry also reported on Telegram that explosives were being used to attack the hospital.
According to Abu Safiya, there are 91 patients at the hospital, including women in the neonatal unit.
He stated that the hospital’s maternity ward, nursery, and other sections had been targeted by a variety of weapons, including quadcopters, tank rounds, and sniper fire.
Fortunately, patients had been transferred to the hospital’s internal hallways by that point, according to Abu Safiya.
The Israeli military told Reuters on Friday that it had delivered food and gasoline to the hospital and assisted with the evacuation of “more than 100 patients” and others, but it declined to comment on the charges made by Abu Safiya.
After a days-long siege and midnight airstrikes that killed scores, Israeli forces attacked and then withdrew from Kamal Adwan Hospital in October, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The offensive was called one of the darkest periods in the conflict by Volker T. rk, the UN human rights chief.
Since October, Israel has renewed its military campaign in northern Gaza, predominantly in the areas of Beit Latiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, describing its efforts as a way to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping.
Because there aren’t enough ambulances to transport patients out, Abu Safiyat told Reuters via text message on Sunday that closing the hospital would be nearly impossible. “Without help, equipment, and time, we cannot safely evacuate these patients,” he stated.
In the midst of an apparent rise in attacks on civilians, aid organizations caution that the Israeli military’s most recent directive puts patient lives at danger.
Mahmoud Shalabi, deputy director of Medical Aid for Palestinians in northern Gaza, said that the Israeli military’s decision to relaunch attacks on a hospital that has already sustained damage and is under siege while 400 civilians, including infants receiving neonatal care, are still trapped inside is a further breach of international law.
Announcing a forced evacuation order whilst refusing aid in or patients and staff out leaves little option to obey, even if patients could be safely moved, he added.
Phillipe Lazzarani, the head of the U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees, wrote in aposton X: More civilians are reported killed and injured. Hospitals and schools have frequently been attacked.
According to UNICEF estimates, at least 4,000 babies in the Gaza Strip have been completely cut off from newborn care in the past year due to sustained attacks on hospitals, especially deadly in the north.
The war that followed the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 and saw 250 taken hostage has decimated Gaza. Israeli forces have since killed some 45,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and destroyed much of the enclave s health system.
Amid the collapse of the health care system, Kamal Adwan Hospital has become a critical provider of essential services for pregnant women and children in northern Gaza.
Before the war, eight neonatal intensive care units were in operation across the Gaza Strip. By November this year, three of those units had been completely destroyed in the north, with the number of incubators plummeting from 105 to just nine all at Kamal Adwan Hospital, according to UNICEF.
After the heavy attacks sustained by the hospital, it is unclear if the [incubators] remain functional,saidAdele Khodr, UNICEF s Middle East and North Africa regional director.
She added, Any newborn baby fighting to sustain its breaths from inside a hospital incubator is entirely defenseless and entirely reliant on specialist medical care and equipment to survive.
Doctors have floated that the Indonesian Hospital, located just outside the Jabaliya refugee camp, could serve as an alternative for transferring patients from Kamal Adwan. But they added that transporting patients and providing the necessary resources there would prove difficult.
The Indonesian Hospital has nonoperational generators, and there is also an oxygen station that is not functioning, Abu Safiya said.
Over the past several months, doctors and aid workers at Kamal Adwan Hospital have repeatedly issued appeals for immediate action to safeguard Gaza s health care system.
We have urgently called on the world to intervene and protect the health care system, and we continue to plead for immediate action to safeguard it from this ongoing attack, Abu Safiya said in his latest statement.
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