Written by Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Mital Malak
CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip said that Israeli forces arrested dozens of medical workers at a hospital in northern Gaza after raiding it on Friday.
The Israeli occupation forces stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia on Friday, ordered dozens of patients and hundreds of others to evacuate the hospital and detained medical staff, including the hospital director, Hossam Abu Safiya.
The Ministry of Health said it was not clear what happened to Abu Safiya, adding that it was concerned about his health after some employees released by the army late Friday reported that he had been beaten by soldiers.
The Israeli army had no immediate comment regarding the detainees.
The World Health Organization said in a post on the X website that the raid on the hospital, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza, put the last major health facility in northern Gaza out of service.
The Ministry of Health said that some patients were evacuated to the Indonesian Hospital, which is out of service, and doctors were prevented from joining them there. Others were transferred to another hospital in the southern Gaza Strip.
Some of the liberated medical teams arrived at the National Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza City.
The Israeli military said on Friday that Hamas fighters had operated from Kamal Adwan Hospital throughout the 15-month war and had made the site a major stronghold. Hamas rejected this as “lies”, saying there were no fighters in the hospital.
The Gaza Ministry of Health also said that Israeli raids across the Strip killed 18 Palestinians on Saturday, at least nine of them in a home in the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army said on Saturday that it had begun night operations against targets in the Beit Hanoun area in the northern Gaza Strip. He added, “The forces are enabling civilians who are still in the area to move away for their safety.”
In the past few months, Israeli forces have expelled people and destroyed much of the area surrounding the northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia.
The Palestinians accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing by depopulating those areas to create a buffer zone. Israel denies doing so, saying it aims to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping in these areas.
The Israeli campaign against Hamas, which previously controlled Gaza, has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Strip. Most of the 2.3 million people were displaced, and much of Gaza was reduced to rubble.
The war was sparked by a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage into Gaza, according to Israeli statistics.
