Nursing director: Israeli troops storm north Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital hours after aid arrives

Occupation forces stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalia in northern Gaza in the late hours of Thursday, only a few hours after a World Health Organization delegation managed to deliver necessary fuel and medical equipment for the hospital's operations, director of the hospital's nursing department Eid Sabbah told Mada Masr on Friday. 

“The situation at the hospital is very dire,” Sabbah said. After the Israeli military stormed the hospital, he added, they destroyed parts of the building and abused doctors, nurses, and patients. 

In a statement issued on Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said that Occupation soldiers forced some of the men who were seeking shelter in the hospital to take off their clothes and arrested some of them. Some of the medical staff, including the director of the hospital, Hossam Abu Safiya, were summoned to the hospital yard.

According to Sabbah, who is still inside the hospital, some of the medical staff were subject to abuse by Israeli soldiers and then detained in a part of the hospital.

The storming of the hospital, where thousands of displaced have been sheltering, follows days of siege in which Israeli troops relentlessly shelled the facility and shot at anyone moving in or around the buildings, critically endangering the lives of patients, medics and civilians taking shelter inside, the facility’s director previously told Mada Masr.

Israeli tanks entered the hospital in the middle of Thursday night amid heavy gunfire and artillery shelling, according to Sabbah.

The only oxygen station that was operating in the hospital was shelled, he added, killing a number of children. 

Some patients were able to leave the hospital before Israeli troops entered. Sabbah told Mada Masr that 49 patients, most of whom were children, left with the WHO delegation that delivered fuel and aid to the hospital on Thursday night.

The head of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a post on X on Friday that his organization has lost touch with the personnel in Kamal Adwan Hospital after the Israeli forces stormed it, adding that the facility has been overflowing with close to 200 patients.

Medical supplies at the facility have been completely depleted in the past weeks, Safiyeh previously told Mada Masr, adding that medical staff were unable to provide medical care to the over 150 critically injured patients.

Amid Israel’s campaign, which is in its third week, around 60,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes and shelters from North Gaza to Gaza City, according to the United Nations.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza issued a statement on Friday denouncing the world’s silence in the face of the most heinous massacre “and the most widespread systematic operation to destroy the health system and kill and arrest patients and medical staff without a finger being moved.”