Israel has been targeting the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, considered a lifeline for those injured in the Strip.
Israeli forces have been using heavy artillery and detonating explosive devices that had been planted in the areas surrounding the hospital, preventing and obstructing the movement of ambulances, as well as that of people seeking to take the wounded from bomb sites to the medical facility.
Israel bullets have been fired into the medical facility, damaging its equipment and rendering it unsafe for patients and those displaced to shelter.
Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said on Sunday the army ordered staff to evacuate the hospital and move patients and injured people toward another hospital in the area.
Abu Safiya said the mission was “next to impossible” because the staff did not have ambulances to move the patients.
Palestinians have accused Israel of carrying out acts of ethnic cleansing to depopulate areas of northern Gaza – chiefly Beit Lahia and Jabalia, to create a buffer zone.
Experts say that the Israeli army’s attacks aim to push the hospital out of service.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said reports of Israeli attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital are “deeply worrisome” and called for an “immediate ceasefire” in the area.
At least 28 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes overnight and from dawn on Sunday, with many of them during an attack on a school-turned-shelter for the displaced in Gaza City, according to the territory’s civil defence.
Eight of those victims – including four children -, were killed in the attack on the Musa Bin Nusayr School that sheltered displaced families in Gaza City.
One of the deadly attacks occurred on the home belonging to the Abu Samra family in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.
