Gaza hospital issues 'last distress call' as fresh Israeli attack wounds patients
Northern Gaza's Kamal Adwan hospital has issued a final plea for help after Israeli forces launched a fresh attack on it on Sunday, targeting its paediatric ward with artillery fire and seriously wounding a child who was recovering from surgery.
Gaza's health ministry said the call for help could be the hospital's "last distress call", adding that “it seems that a decision has been made to execute all staff who refused to evacuate the hospital".
In a video message, the hospital's director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, reported that the strikes “reached every corner of the hospital”, hitting its water supplies, courtyard and the electricity network.
The Israeli attacks wounded six people, including a 13-year-old girl who had just undergone an operation, he said.
“She was hit by shrapnel, she was already injured and receiving treatment for her first injury,” Safiya said. “She was struck again in this attack, sustaining a serious abdominal injury.”
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Safiya added that the attack was conducted during a visit by a World Health Organisation (WHO) delegation, which was attempting to evacuate some of the patients.
“As a result they had to seek shelter within the hospital’s departments due to the intensity, severity and randomness of the bombing,” he said.
“We have no explanation for why it happened,” he said, adding that the army did not warn the hospital staff ahead of the attack.
According to the health ministry, many medical staff and patients have been wounded by the Israeli attacks.
Staff are unable to move between hospital departments and cannot rescue their wounded colleagues as Israeli forces continue to "bomb and destroy" the building, the ministry said.
‘Dire in every sense of the word’
Since last month, when Israel launched a new offensive on northern Gaza, believed to be part of the so-called Generals' Plan, Kamal Adwan hospital has been under siege. Barely any humanitrian aid has been allowed to enter the north since 5 October.
Israel has ordered all of the 400,000 Palestinians in northern Gaza to move south, and issued expulsion orders to Kamal Adwan and the area's two other hospitals, al-Awda and the Indonesian hospital.
'We are still under siege. No ambulances have been allowed in, nor have medical teams been permitted to enter northern Gaza'
- Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, Kamal Adwan hospital
Around 300 critically ill patients have been trapped in the hospitals, according to the UN.
On Thursday, Israeli air strikes targeted the third floor of the Kamal Adwan, torching WHO medical supplies that had been delivered just a few days previously “via complex missions”, the agency's director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
On 26 October, Medecins Sans Frontieres reported that one of its surgeons was among several doctors rounded up and detained by Israeli forces.
Safiya said that, despite issuing multiple pleas for medical supplies, the hospital has received “barely enough for a day or two”, with only enough fuel to last a few days.
“We are still under siege," he emphasised. “No ambulances have been allowed in, nor have medical teams been permitted to enter northern Gaza.”
“Around the clock, people come to Kamal Adwan Hospital on their own,” he added.
“The situation is dire in every sense of the word. Words fail to describe the reality we are enduring.”
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