Israeli forces set fire to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip on Friday, following a horrific massacre in the surrounding area that resulted in the killing of 50 Palestinians, including 5 medical staff, according to international media reports.
The Ministry of Health reported that approximately 50 people, including 5 medical staff from Kamal Adwan Hospital, were killed as a result of an Israeli airstrike on a building adjacent to the hospital.
The ministry clarified that among the martyrs were Dr. Ahmed Samour, a pediatrician, and Israa Abu Zayda, a laboratory technician.
Both were killed while trying to return to their homes, while a technician was martyred while attempting to rescue the injured. In addition, paramedics near the hospital were killed, and their bodies remain in the street. Israeli forces detonated a fourth explosive robot in the vicinity of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. Hours after the massacre, the Israeli army surrounded Kamal Adwan Hospital and demanded that those inside come out into its courtyard.
A source inside the hospital told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces demanded that the hospital administration evacuate medical staff, patients, and their companions to the hospital courtyard. This was accompanied by gunfire and tank shelling in the surrounding area.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian news agency, Safa, reported that Israeli forces had raided Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza on Friday morning and evacuated medical staff, both male and female, along with patients and residents living near the hospital.
All were forced to move to Al-Fakhour school where they were held in the schoolyard. Marwan Al-Hamas, director of field hospitals in the Gaza Ministry of Health, said that the occupation wants to stop health services in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, emphasizing that Israel’s claims about Kamal Adwan Hospital are false.
Al-Hamas held the occupation responsible for the lives of patients and doctors at Kamal Adwan Hospital, stressing that the cessation of services at Kamal Adwan Hospital deprives the northern part of the Gaza Strip of medical services.
There were about 350 people inside the hospital, including 75 injured and sick patients, as well as their companions, and 180 medical staff and workers in the hospital’s various departments.
