Haitham Imad/EPA
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced, this Friday, the closure of the last hospital in northern Gaza, following an Israeli attack. Babies are dying in Gaza due to extreme cold and lack of shelter
The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that the last major operational hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip is “out of service” after an Israeli army attack on Hamas fighters near the hospital.
“This morning’s attack on the Kamal Adwan hospital put the last major health center in northern Gaza, located in Beit Lahia, out of service,” declared the WHO on the social network X.
“First information indicates that the main services were set on fire and destroyed during the attack. Sixty healthcare professionals and 25 patients are in critical condition”, the organization added.
The Israeli army had announced that it had launched an operation against Hamas fighters near this hospital, which plays a crucial role in a Gaza Strip whose health services have been devastated by 14 months of war between Israel and Hamas.
This operation near the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia comes a day after the hospital’s director, Hossam Abou Safiya, announced that five staff members had been killed in an Israeli attack.
The Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, described that Israeli military forced medical staff and patients at Kamal Adwan Hospital to gather in the courtyard and take off their clothes in the middle of winter.
During their attacks, Israeli troops often carry out mass arrests, leaving men in their underwear to be interrogated, in what the military says is a security measure as it searches for Hamas fighters.
The Israeli military claims to be conducting operations against Hamas infrastructure and militants in the hospital area, without providing details, reiterating that fighters from the Palestinian group maintain their presence in the facilities, although there is no proof and the hospital team denies this.
The Ministry of Health also reported that Israeli troops set fires in several parts of Kamal Adwan, including the laboratory and surgery department.
“The fire is burning throughout the hospital”an unidentified member of the hospital staff said in an audio message posted on the social media accounts of hospital director Hossam Abu Safiya.
Babies die abandoned in the cold
Also this Friday, the commissioner general of the United Nations Assistance Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, denounced, after the successive Israeli attacks, the baby death in the Gaza Strip due to extreme cold and lack of shelter.
“Meanwhile, blankets, mattresses and other winter supplies have been held up in the region for months, awaiting approval to enter Gaza,” he said in a message published on the social network X, asking for the flow of supplies to continue.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) denounced the “desperate conditions” in which children in Gaza find themselves, after four newborns have died of hypothermia due to low temperatures.
The Israeli offensive has already caused the deaths of around 45,400 Palestinians in the enclave, according to Gaza authorities, while around 810 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and in settler attacks since then in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
More than 90% of the 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have been expelled from their homes and the majority of them are now sheltering in improvised tent camps in the south and center of the territory in the middle of winter, with temperatures dropping. to less than ten degrees centigrade.
This area has been without access to food and other goods for months, increasing fears of hunger. The UN says Israeli troops allowed only four humanitarian deliveries to this location between December 1 and 23.
