Israel kills three doctors in bombing of the last operational hospital in northern Gaza

Dozens of Palestinians who worked or were hospitalized in two hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip died this Tuesday as a result of bombings by the Israeli Army, reported the Gaza Ministry of Health, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
20 November 2023 Monday 21:21
3 Reads
Israel kills three doctors in bombing of the last operational hospital in northern Gaza

Dozens of Palestinians who worked or were hospitalized in two hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip died this Tuesday as a result of bombings by the Israeli Army, reported the Gaza Ministry of Health, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas. Among the bombed hospitals is Al Awda, the last one remaining operational in the entire north of the strip and where the last maternity hospital is located.

"There are dozens of deaths due to an Israeli bombing against the Indonesian hospital, it is feared that the occupation will carry out another massacre" in that medical center in the city of Bait Lahia, where at least 12 people died yesterday due to Israeli attacks, indicated the ministry in a statement in which it assures that it also recorded "dozens of deaths and injuries among patients and medical personnel due to an Israeli bombardment against the Al Awda hospital", in Jabalia, a town that borders Bait Lahia and that was surrounded by the army. Israeli this Tuesday.

According to Mohammed, a social worker who has been working inside the hospital for weeks and with whom La Vanguardia has maintained contact, there are four dead at the Al Awda hospital, including three doctors. "I went to save people after the first bomb and after two minutes they bombed the place where I was before," he explained from the scene.

At the Indonesian Hospital, the other target of the Israeli bombings, the situation is unsustainable. The director of the hospital has explained to the Qatari channel Al Jazeera that the center has run out of treatments or medicines and can no longer provide services to patients. "We can't perform any surgery because of the Israeli bombings that hit the hospital," he said. They also cannot remove the bodies of the deceased and have warned of the unhealthiness of the center and the danger of infections. "The bodies of the martyrs have been lying on the floor of the hospital for two days," he denounced.

Since the war began, more than a month and a half ago, Israel has justified its attacks on schools, mosques, markets and hospitals in Gaza by arguing that Hamas uses civilian structures for war activities.

"The Indonesian hospital is under siege, anyone who leaves is at risk and is the target of indiscriminate bombing, there is no information on the condition of the patients," denounced a spokesperson for the Gaza Ministry of Health.

"The situation we are experiencing is tragic and indescribable, and there are dead bodies in the hospital. We transport the bodies ourselves, and this is beyond human endurance," said a medical source from the surgery department of the Indonesian hospital. It is the sixth direct attack that the Indonesian hospital has received since the escalation began, according to OCHA, the UN humanitarian agency.

The Israeli army reported Tuesday that it surrounded Jabalia, where its fighter jets, armed drones and special forces supported ground troops to destroy "three tunnels in which terrorists were hiding," as well as rocket launchers.

Without electricity, drinking water, food and medical supplies, the hospitals in the north of the Strip, including Al Shifa - the most important in the Palestinian enclave - stopped working days ago, but in the midst of the crossfire, it has not been possible to evacuate all the people they still house.

This week, the Israeli Army published images showing Hamas tunnels and spaces in the Al Shifa hospital area, and assured that the militants used those places to hide a large arsenal and to execute an Israeli soldier.

Some 700 people, including 259 wounded and sick, remain trapped in that hospital "in a tragic situation, without water, electricity or food," according to Gaza Health, which assures that the Israeli siege of the hospital continues.

The authorities in Gaza did not specify how many people - including patients, medical personnel and displaced people - are in the Indonesian hospital, but they assured that two buses transporting evacuees from that medical center managed to arrive this morning in the south of the Strip.

At least 120 of those evacuees were received at the Naser hospital, according to official figures, while others were taken to the European hospital.

Israel declared war on Hamas on October 7 following an attack by the Islamist group that included rocket fire and the infiltration of some 3,000 militiamen, who massacred some 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 240 in Israeli villages near the Gaza Strip. Loop.

Israel's air, naval and land forces have since counterattacked in the Palestinian enclave, where there are already more than 13,300 dead, most of them children and women, as well as more than 6,500 missing people who could be under the rubble, according to Gazan authorities. which the number of fatalities could be even higher.

Added to this are tens of thousands of injured, as well as more than 1.7 million displaced people - more than two thirds of the total population - who are suffering from a serious humanitarian crisis.