Israeli strikes this weekend on what’s thought-about north Gaza’s most important hospital have resulted in a couple of dozen wounded employees, together with the hardly operational medical facility’s director, amid the area’s worsening humanitarian disaster.
For 50 days, Israeli forces have incessantly attacked the territory’s northernmost area, which incorporates the cities of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, walling the world off from the remainder of Gaza in a method that has blocked most humanitarian help from getting into, rendering the north just about uninhabitable.
Like the remainder of Gaza, the Israeli army continues to assault the north’s well being care system, together with Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, the place solely two docs stay. An in a single day drone strike on the ability broken its generator and oxygen provide, in addition to significantly injured hospital chief Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya whereas he was sitting in his workplace.
Talking from a affected person mattress at his personal hospital’s intensive care unit, Abu Safiya mentioned he was hit within the again and thigh by a sort of bomb he’d by no means seen earlier than: a quadcopter drone containing tiny items of metallic shrapnel that “can barely be seen by the naked eye.”
“Right now, I’m in need of an urgent consultation with a vascular surgeon due to the intensity of bleeding in the site of injury,” he mentioned in a recording shared by the Gaza Health Ministry’s director basic, Dr. Muneer Alboursh.
“There are six pieces of shrapnel that penetrated the area of the thigh, and I believe they caused a tear in the blood vessels and veins,” Abu Safiya continued. “We are in critical need for [Israel] to allow entry of medical and surgical delegations in order for me to get treated and for other people to get treated.”
Kamal Adwan Hospital has confronted fixed, intense bombardment by Israeli forces who declare that Hamas militants cover amongst sufferers, one thing Palestinians, help staff and media investigations have denied. The hospital has confronted every day assaults for the previous week, in what Abu Safiya described as “the same scene [that] repeats and worsens.”
Abu Safiya has tried to supply near-daily updates on the worsening scenario at Kamal Adwan and war-ravaged North Gaza, the place meals, technique of communication, and medication are scarce. As of Friday, the hospital had 85 injured sufferers, eight important instances in intensive care, 14 youngsters within the pediatric ward and 4 newborns within the neonatal unit. It’s unclear how the latest destruction of the gas generator and oxygen provide will affect present sufferers.
Israel allegedly transferred about 17 sufferers and caregivers on Saturday from Kamal Adwan to different hospitals in Gaza, in response to COGAT, the Israeli authorities company in control of humanitarian help within the territory. The Sunday assertion made no point out of the Israeli army’s strikes on the hospital.
Simply final month, Abu Safiya’s 15-year-old son, Ibrahim, was killed in an Israeli drone strike in close by Jabalia after surviving accidents from Israeli snipers on the army’s first raid final December on Kamal Adwan. Troopers have additionally rounded up many of the hospital chief’s colleagues in detention camps and prevented Gaza Civil Protection staff from bringing ambulances to the north.
“What is clearly happening is that the occupation wants to expel us from this health care facility,” Abu Safiya mentioned.
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Abu Safiya is among the many many Palestinian well being care staff who’ve been focused since Israel launched its present siege on Gaza in response to the October 2023 lethal Hamas assault. Along with indiscriminately bombing the territory of two.3 million Palestinians, Israeli forces are additionally destroying the land and its folks by utterly collapsing the well being care system.
For greater than a yr, troopers have invaded hospitals, kidnapped and killed medical staff, prevented ample medical help groups from getting into the territory, and unfold starvation and illness by way of an ongoing help blockade and the destruction of water and sewage techniques.
“These people, they target everyone. But I swear, this will not stop us from continuing our humanitarian work. We will keep on providing this service no matter what it costs us,” Abu Safiya mentioned. “We are up till now appealing to the world and will keep asking, with the faint hope that there are people with a living conscience still out there.”
