TEL AVIV, ISRAEL – One of the last remaining hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip stopped operating on Tuesday after being stormed by the Israeli army, its director said.
Fadel Naim told AFP Israeli troops had attacked the Al-Ahli hospital and arrested doctors, medical staff and patients, destroying part of the building’s grounds.
Israel’s attack has “put the hospital out of action”, he said. “We can’t receive any patients or injured.”
At least four people who were wounded by Israeli fire on Monday died on Tuesday after being injured in the Al-Ahli assault, he said.
“According to our information, there are dozens of wounded in the surrounding streets,” he said.
Al-Ahli, also known as the Baptist or Ahli Arab hospital, was already heavily damaged by an explosion in its car park on October 17, resulting in at least dozens of deaths.
Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad accuse Israel, which denies responsibility and blames a misfired rocket by Islamic Jihad for that blast.
Hospitals, protected under international humanitarian law, have repeatedly been hit by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7.
Israeli troops have previously raided other medical facilities in Gaza, including Al-Shifa, the territory’s largest hospital, which is now functioning at minimal capacity with a very small team.
On Sunday, the World Health Organization said the Al-Ahli hospital was receiving “critical patients” from Al-Shifa for surgery.
The Al-Shifa emergency department, devastated by Israeli bombardments, is “a blood bath” and “in need of resuscitation”, the WHO said.
Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, said on Tuesday another hospital in northern Gaza, Al Awda in the Jabalia area, had been turned “into a barracks” by the Israeli army.
He said the army was holding 240 people in the hospital, “including 80 medical staff and 40 patients,” and had arrested its director, doctor Ahmad Mhanna.
Israel is facing mounting international pressure over the rising civilian death toll and destruction of hospitals in Gaza.
The deadliest ever war in the narrow territory began after Hamas members poured across the border and launched a brutal attack that left 1,139 people dead in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on the latest official Israeli figures.
Some 250 people were abducted by members during the attack and taken to the Gaza Strip.
In Israel’s retaliatory assault against Hamas, at least 19,667 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in the Palestinian territory, according to the health ministry there.