Israeli soldiers have stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last remaining medical facility in the northern Gaza Strip, torching large sections and ordering hundreds of people to leave.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Friday that contact had been lost with staff inside the hospital in Beit Lahiya, which has been under siege and heavy pressure from Israeli forces for weeks. It had no information on the fate of patients who were inside, it added.
“The occupation forces are inside the hospital now and they are burning it,” Munir al-Bursh, the director of the ministry, said in a statement.
The Israeli army issued a statement confirming it launched a raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital, claiming without evidence that the medical facility “serves as a Hamas terrorist stronghold in northern Gaza”.
Israeli forces have throughout their assault on Gaza routinely besieged and attacked medical facilities – housing both patients and displaced families – under similar pretexts.
Fire erupts
Youssef Abu el-Rish, Gaza’s deputy health minister, said Israeli forces had set fire to the surgical department, laboratory and a storehouse in the hospital.