Gaza hospital out of action after Israeli army assault: Director

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES (AFP) — One of the last remaining hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip stopped operating on Tuesday after being stormed by the Israeli army, its director said.

Fadel Naim told AFP Israeli troops had attacked the Al-Ahli hospital and arrested doctors, medical staff and patients, destroying part of the building’s grounds.

Israel’s attack has “put the hospital out of action,” he said. “We can’t receive any patients or injured.”

At least four people who were wounded by Israeli fire on Monday died on Tuesday after being injured in the Al-Ahli assault, he said.

“According to our information, there are dozens of wounded in the surrounding streets,” he said.

Hospitals, protected under international humanitarian law, have repeatedly been hit by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 7.

The military accuses Hamas of having tunnels under hospitals and using the medical facilities as command centers to plan and carry out attacks against the army and Israel, a charge denied by the Islamist group.

Al-Ahli, also known as the Baptist or Ahli Arab hospital, was already heavily damaged by an explosion in its parking lot on Oct. 17, resulting in at least dozens of deaths.

Militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad accused Israel, which denied responsibility and blamed a misfired rocket by Islamic Jihad for that blast.

Mounting pressure

Israeli troops have previously raided other medical facilities in Gaza, including Al-Shifa, the territory’s largest hospital, which is now functioning at minimal capacity with a very small team.

Last month Al-Shifa hospital became the focus of an extended army operation as part of its war against Hamas.

On Sunday, the World Health Organization said Al-Ahli hospital was receiving “critical patients” from Al-Shifa for surgery.

The Al-Shifa emergency department, devastated by Israeli bombardments, is “a blood bath” and “in need of resuscitation,” the WHO said.

Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, said on Tuesday that another hospital in northern Gaza, Al-Awda in the Jabalia area, had been turned “into a barracks” by the Israeli army.

He said the army was holding 240 people in the hospital, “including 80 medical staff and 40 patients,” and had arrested its director, Dr. Ahmad Mhanna.

On Sunday WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency was “appalled by the effective destruction” of another northern Gaza hospital, Kamal Adwan, where Israeli forces carried out a multiday operation against Hamas.

Israel is facing mounting international pressure over the rising civilian death toll and destruction of hospitals in Gaza.

The deadliest-ever war in the narrow territory began after Hamas militants poured across the border in an unprecedented attack on Oct. 7 that killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on the latest official Israeli figures.

During their attack, militants abducted about 250 people, latest Israeli figures say.

In Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive against Hamas, at least 19,667 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in the Palestinian territory, according to the health ministry there.

The ministry says around 52,600 have also been wounded.

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by Agence France-Presse