Hospital director injured in Israeli drone strike on Beit Lahia medical facility

Israeli forces bombed the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia on Saturday night, injuring hospital director Hossam Abu Safiya and other medical staff.

Occupation forces have besieged, targeted and stormed the hospital multiple times, along with other hospitals and medical facilities in northern Gaza. 

The facilities have also been cut off from fuel and medical supplies, as Israel continues an operation it launched almost two months ago, invading and imposing a siege on the northern half of the strip and separating northeast Gaza, where Beit Lahia is located, from Gaza City in the northwest. 

Abu Safiya, who was moderately injured last night after being targeted by an Israeli drone strike on the hospital in Beit Lahia during the course of his work, told Mada Masr on Sunday that his targeting is only the latest in a series of Israeli assaults on Kamal Adwan. Safiya spoke to journalists from his hospital bed in Kamal Adwan.

Just the day before, Occupation forces had targeted the hospital's reception and emergency department. A drone dropped several bombs at the hospital entrance, injuring four members of the medical staff. The radiology department building was also targeted, with two members of the nursing staff suffering serious injuries.

Israeli forces also targeted the hospital’s power generators, putting some of them out of service, as well as its oxygen generator, causing malfunctions in the hospital’s oxygen supply lines, Abu Safiya told reporters.

Safiya has lived through two months of onslaught on the hospital. He gestured to the killing of his son in an Israeli attack on the hospital in October, the killing of several members of the medical staff and the forced disappearance of several others.

For his part, Health Ministry in Gaza spokesperson Khalil al-Daqran said that the situation in northern Gaza is catastrophic, with Occupation forces aiming to completely destroy the health system there.

Daqran pointed out that the Israeli forces have consistently targeted medical teams and ambulances, blocked the entry of medical supplies and medicines to hospitals, and continued to shut down crossings in the face of thousands of sick and injured Palestinians from seeking medical care outside Gaza. 

A United Nations spokesperson said last week that Israeli forces had blocked aid deliveries to the Kamal Adwan Hospital.   

Israeli forces aim to kill as many Palestinians as possible, Daqran told Mada Masr.

Similarly, director of the Government Media Office in Gaza Ismail al-Thawabtah told Mada Masr that Kamal Adawn in particular has been subjected to a series of Israeli assaults over the past two weeks, but that hospitals in the north have been facing a similar fate since the start of the Israeli operation there. 

More than 1,000 doctors, nurses and health workers in the Gaza Strip have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7 last year, in addition nearly 300 medical workers detained and tortured in Israeli prisons, Thawabta added.

Israeli forces continued on Sunday its siege and assault on northern Gaza for the 51st day, blowing up more homes and infrastructure, and blocking the entry of medicine, food and water, in order to force residents of the north to flee south.

Hundreds of residents were forced to leave Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, to the southern and central parts of the city following new Israeli evacuation orders. 

Palestinians trying to leave Jabalia camp further east, meanwhile, were subject to Israeli bombardment, which killed and injured several, according to the Safa News Agency.