Gaza's last key health facility 'now empty'

JERUSALEM/GAZA — Israel's military on Saturday said a hospital director was being held as a suspected Hamas militant after a north Gaza raid the World Health Organization said left the area's last major health facility emptied of patients and staff.

The military said the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hossam Abu Safiyeh, was being held for questioning, on suspicion of "being a Hamas terrorist operative", and that the raid was over.

Israel's military said it had "completed a targeted operation against a Hamas command center in the Kamal Adwan Hospital", leading to the detention of "over 240 terrorists in the area".

Hamas on Friday dismissed Israel's assertion that its fighters had operated from the hospital throughout the 15-month-old Gaza conflict, saying no fighters had been in the hospital.

In its statement on Saturday, Hamas urged the UN and relevant international agencies to intervene urgently to protect the remaining hospitals and medical facilities in northern Gaza.

The group also called for UN observers to be sent to medical facilities in Gaza to refute the Israeli allegations that they were being used for military purposes.

Gaza health officials and the WHO earlier on Saturday said the raid forced the hospital in Beit Lahia out of service and led to Abu Safiyeh's detention.

Also on Saturday, the Israeli military said it intercepted two projectiles fired at Israel from northern Gaza.

Since Oct 6, Israeli operations in Gaza have focused on the north, where they say their land and air offensive aims to prevent Hamas from regrouping, Agence France-Presse reported.

"The situation is catastrophic," said Ammar al-Barsh, 50, a resident of Jabalia, near Beit Lahia. "There is no medical service, no ambulances and no civil defense in the north."

Israel's military says it has killed hundreds of militants since Oct 6, while rescuers in the area say thousands of civilians have died.

"Kamal Adwan is now empty," the WHO said, adding it was "appalled "by the raid.

"The systematic dismantling of the health system and a siege for over 80 days on north Gaza puts the lives of the 75,000 Palestinians remaining in the area at risk," the United Nations health agency said in a statement.

Apart from detaining Abu Safiyeh, the military said it was holding "Hamas engineering and anti-tank missile operatives and approximately 15 terrorists who infiltrated Israel during the Oct 7 massacre" in 2023.

'Destroyed, nonfunctional'

The WHO said the remaining 15 critical patients, 50 caregivers and 20 health workers were transferred on Friday to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, which it described as "destroyed and nonfunctional".

It said the WHO would undertake an urgent mission to the Indonesian Hospital on Sunday, partly to move the critical patients to Gaza City.

The WHO said initial reports indicated that some areas around the Kamal Adwan Hospital were burned and severely damaged during the raid.

Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry earlier reported that several medical staff had been detained along with Abu Safiyeh.

The WHO said another north Gaza hospital, Al-Awda in Jabalia, is "barely able to function, and severely damaged due to recent airstrikes".

Israel's former defense minister Moshe Yaalon last month used Beit Lahia as an example when he accused the army of "ethnic cleansing" in Gaza, comments dismissed as "dishonest" by the Likud Party to which he once belonged.

Seven people were killed and others seriously wounded in an Israeli strike on the upper floor of Al-Wafa Hospital in the center of Gaza City on Sunday, the Palestinian civil defense said.

The Gaza conflict was triggered by the Hamas-led Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which resulted in about 1,200 deaths, according to Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 45,514 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry on Sunday.

Agencies Via Xinhua