GENEVA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) storming of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip is aimed at completely destroying the health system and imposing deadly living conditions leading to the death of Palestinians and depriving them of life-saving medical care, as part of the crime of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The Euro-Med Monitor reported that the IOF encircled Kamal Adwan Hospital at around 7:00 am on Friday morning, and asked its director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, to gather patients, the wounded, and medical staff in the hospital’s courtyard within 15 minutes.
The hospital nurse, Walid Al-Badi, reported in an audio recording that the IOF stormed the hospital’s courtyard as medical staff and patients began to gather in it, before communication with the hospital administration, patients, and companions was off.
There are about 350 people in the hospital, including 75 injured and sick people, in addition to their companions, and 180 medical staff and personnel in the hospital’s various departments.
The storming of the hospital comes after the IOF repeatedly targeted the hospital and its surroundings over the past weeks, the latest of which was the detonation of several booby-trapped boxes in its vicinity, leading to the martyrdom of five of its personnel in a nearby building.
According to the statement, during this month, the IOF carried out more than 37 direct attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital, mostly by dropping bombs from quadcopter aircraft towards the hospital’s departments, in addition to shooting, artillery shelling, and striking its gate, in addition to the repeated bombings with robots and booby-trapped boxes in its vicinity.
Euro-Med recalled that the Israeli occupation army had requested the evacuation of the hospital several times since the start of the third incursion into the northern Gaza Strip on October 5.
When the medical staff refused, it added, the IOF resorted to repeated shelling and forced many of the patients’ companions and some of the medical staff to evacuate, arrested some of them and forced the rest to flee.
The human rights group warned that the IOF is systematically and repeatedly targeting the few medical staff remaining in northern Gaza, as part of a clear effort to end and destroy the entire health system in the north, aiming at completely emptying it of its residents, through ongoing mass killings and forced displacement.
Euro-Med also stressed that the repeated attacks on hospitals, storming them, and killing their staff and patients constitute a stigma on humanity and reflect the failure of relevant international organizations to assume their responsibilities in ensuring the protection of hospitals, workers, and patients.
The Euro-Med called on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to take all necessary measures to reach hospitals in northern Gaza, to assume their responsibilities to ensure the protection of patients, the wounded and medical staff, and to provide them with humanitarian aid, medicines, medical supplies, food, and medical staff.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor renewed its call on all States and the United Nations to carry out their international legal obligations to stop the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip, impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, hold it accountable and punish it for all its crimes, take all effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians there, prevent their forced displacement and ensure their return to their areas of residence, release all Palestinian detainees who have been arbitrarily arrested, and allow all forms of humanitarian food and non-food aid, especially life-saving aid, to enter quickly and without obstacles in a manner that meets the needs of all residents of the Gaza Strip, especially in the northern areas, and ensure the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation army from the entire Gaza Strip.
