Israeli forces on Friday raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, torching large sections and ordering dozens of patients and hundreds of others to leave, officials said.
In separate incidents across Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people, medics said. One of those strikes on a house in Gaza City killed 15 people, medics and the civil emergency service said.
The Palestinian health ministry said contact with staff inside the facility, which has been under heavy pressure from Israeli forces for weeks, had been lost.
"The occupation forces are inside the hospital now and they are burning it," Munir Al-Bursh, director of the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, said in a statement.
Youssef Abu El-Rish, the deputy health minister in Gaza, said troops set fires in several parts of Kamal Adwan, including the hospital’s lab and surgery department.
An Israeli airstrike on Thursday killed 50 people near the hospital, including five medical workers.
The ministry said 25 patients and 60 health workers remained in the hospital out of 75 patients and 180 staff. However attempts to reach hospital staff were unsuccessful.
“Fire is ablaze everywhere in the hospital,” an unidentified member of the staff said in an audio message from the hospital posted on the social media accounts of its director Hossam Abu Safiya.
The staffer said some evacuated patients had been unhooked from oxygen. “There are currently patients who could die at any moment,” she said.
Like the Indonesian and Al-Awda hospitals, Kamal Adwan has been repeatedly attacked by Israeli forces who have been attacking the northern edge of the Gaza Strip for weeks, Palestinian medical staff say.
Hundreds ordered to leave hospital
Bursh said the army had ordered 350 people to leave Kamal Adwan for a nearby school sheltering displaced families. They included 75 patients, their companions, and 185 medical staff.
Abu El-Rish said soldiers were transferring patients and medical staff to the Indonesian Hospital, which had already been put out of action by heavy damage and had been evacuated by Israeli forces a day earlier.
Footage circulating on Palestinian and Arab media showed smoke rising from the area of Kamal Adwan.
Much of the area around the northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia has been cleared of people and systematically razed, fuelling speculation that Israel intends to ethnically cleanse the area and permanently occupy it.
In a statement, Hamas blamed Israel and the United States for the fate of Kamal Adwan Hospital's occupants.
Israel's war on Gaza has killed over 45,436 Palestinians, according to health officials in the enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced, and much of Gaza is in ruins.