Israel sets northern Gaza’s last ICU ablaze, Kamal Adwan Hospital director tells Mada Masr

The intensive care unit at the Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last remaining ICU in northern Gaza, was set ablaze on Wednesday by Israeli tank fire, hospital director Hossam Abu Safiya told Mada Masr.

The Israeli military launched sweeping operations in northern Gaza in October, killing thousands and expelling tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in the northeast. 

Israeli forces have since blocked the delivery of goods and supplies to the Kamal Adwan Hospital, according to the United Nations, with relentless shelling on and around the medical facility leaving extensive destruction in its departments and killing patients and medical staff. 

In another intensive attack on the hospital and its surroundings, Israeli forces targeted earlier this week several buildings around the hospital, as well as the facility itself, which is currently treating 71 patients in critical condition, according to Abu Safiya. 

Abu Safiya told Mada Masr that Israeli airstrikes have targeted more than eight buildings in the vicinity in the past two days, including one strike on Tuesday evening that hit an inhabited building. Describing the scene as “difficult and extremely harrowing,” he said that residents had fled the burning building with their bodies on fire. 

The recent strikes killed at least eight people, the hospital director said, with many more still trapped under the rubble, including children. 

Eyewitness Nehad Naim described similar scenes. He told Mada Masr that the area around the Kamal Adwan Hospital has been under intense shelling over the past two days. Any civilian presence or movement in the area is immediately targeted with Israeli artillery fire, he said.

“We couldn’t sleep last night because of the intensity of the shelling. We watched buildings burn under the strikes concentrated near the hospital,” he added. “We saw corpses on fire, and many victims ran toward the hospital, their bodies on fire.”

Abu Safiya said that tanks and bulldozers were also deployed heavily in the area, firing indiscriminately in all directions throughout Wednesday.

It was tank fire directly targeted at the intensive care unit that caused a massive fire to break out, Abu Safiya said. He said hospital staff evacuated ICU patients with great difficulty and barely managed to remove oxygen cylinders from the emergency room. 

They extinguished the fire using blankets due to the lack of fire safety equipment. Civil defense crews have been unable to operate in northern Gaza for weeks due to the lack of fuel, and targeted attacks and arrests which have hindered their capacity to respond to emergencies in that part of the strip.

Other hospital departments at Kamal Adwan suffered extensive damage, with bullets piercing medical equipment and devices, as well as the facility’s windows. The hospital’s isolation unit was completely destroyed by fire, Abu Safiya said.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces also targeted a group of civilians outside the hospital, Abu Safiya said, killing one person and injuring many more. He added that paramedic Wessam Ibrahim was killed due to the ongoing shelling in northern Gaza.

“Our lives are in constant danger,” said Naim. “We don’t know when our turn will come in this cycle of killing. We are under siege, haven’t eaten for days, and the shelling never stops. If we’re injured, there’s no one to treat us.”