Israel’s genocide has killed five staff members at one of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospitals, the facility’s director says, as yet another baby freezes to death in the besieged and bombed Palestinian enclave.

Hussam Abu Safia, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, on Thursday said the “martyrs included a doctor.” Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from central Gaza, said a laboratory technician and two maintenance workers were among those killed in the attack.

“We know that the hospital is one of the only medical facilities still operating, and it is working with the bare minimum human resources and a lack of medical supplies,” she said.

“Israeli forces have been attacking the surroundings of Kamal Adwan Hospital, sending quadcopters inside the hospital and shooting Palestinians.”

The hospital has been rendered nonoperational after weeks of near-daily attacks. Israeli forces previously killed the director of the hospital’s ICU, Dr Ahmed al-Kahlout, and wounded dozens of medical staff in attacks on and near the facility.

Khoudary said Palestinian rescue workers have been unable to reach the bodies of those killed at the hospital. “People are unable to bury those Palestinians who are being killed every single day by the Israeli forces in northern Gaza,” she added.

Israel launched a large-scale ground offensive in northern Gaza on October 5, saying it aimed to prevent the Palestinian group Hamas from regrouping.

Since then, no sufficient humanitarian aid, including food, medicine and fuel, has been allowed into the area, leaving the remaining population on the verge of famine.

The World Health Organization has described conditions at Kamal Adwan Hospital as “appalling” and said it was operating at a “minimum” level.

Another baby freezes to death Meanwhile, a fourth infant has died due to extreme cold within 72 hours in Gaza, the Wafa news agency reported on Thursday.

Medical sources said the baby died due to a drop in temperature as the humanitarian conditions across the enclave are dire.

“The tents do not protect from the cold, and it gets very cold at night with no way to keep warm,” said Dr Ahmed al-Farra, the chief paediatric doctor at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis area.

In more than a year of Israeli attacks and lack of aid deliveries, many families in Gaza have been left without adequate shelter and resources to cope with the changing weather.

Local health officials told Wafa a lack of food among mothers was contributing to a rise in health issues among children, further straining medical facilities and emergency services.

Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children. The offensive has also caused widespread destruction and displaced about 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, often multiple times.

Hundreds of thousands of people are packed into tent camps along the coast as the cold, wet winter sets in. Aid groups have struggled to deliver food and supplies and said there are shortages of blankets, warm clothing and firewood.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/26/israel-kills-five-medical-staff-as-another-baby-freezes-to-death-in-gaza

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.

“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.

The fire then “spread to all buildings” in the medical complex, according to a separate statement by the enclave’s Health Ministry.

It said Kamal Adwan is “suffering from a stifling siege, as the operating and surgery departments, laboratory, maintenance, ambulance units and warehouses have been completely burned”.

The ministry added that all generators in the facility had been destroyed.

It also said, “the [Israeli] occupation army is forcibly transferring patients and the injured under the threat of weapons and gun barrels to the Indonesian Hospital, which lacks medical supplies, water, medicines, and even electricity and generators.”

Like the Indonesian and al-Awda hospitals, Kamal Adwan has been repeatedly attacked by Israeli forces, especially after they launched a renewed ground offensive in the area more than two months ago. The north, where a famine is looming, has been under total siege and cut off from the rest of the Strip since then.

Al-Bursh said the Israeli army had ordered 350 people to leave Kamal Adwan for a nearby school sheltering displaced families. This included 75 patients, their companions, and 185 medical staff.

Footage circulating on local media showed smoke rising from the area of Kamal Adwan Hospital.

Much of the area around the northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and systematically razed, prompting speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone. ‘Devastating blow’ Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, said there has been a scarcity of information coming out of Kamal Adwan on Friday, but witnesses who were in the facility said they faced inspections from Israeli soldiers.

Witnesses also “confirmed that the Israeli military had conducted field executions in [the hospital’s] vicinity”, Abu Azzoum said, adding that the fate of the hospital’s director is unknown.

Kamal Adwan has been seeing a “gradual escalation” and “deliberate attacks” by the Israeli army, our correspondent said, adding that the forced evacuations and fires have dealt a “devastating blow to the already fragile northern Gaza’s healthcare system”.

On Thursday, health officials said five medical staff, including a paediatrician, were killed by Israeli fire at Kamal Adwan.

Elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people, including 15 people in a single house in Gaza City, medics and the civil emergency service said.

Also on Friday, 14 countries joined or signalled their intention to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

Organisations including the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also found that Israeli actions in Gaza are compatible with the crime of genocide.

Israel’s assault has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians since October last year, according to health officials in the enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.

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