As Israel Launches Massive Attack in Northern Gaza, Hospital Director Defies Israeli Evacuation Order
“As long as there are patients, I won't leave,” Dr. Hossam Abu Safia tells Drop Site News from Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Update: October 10, 2024: Scroll to the bottom for the latest updates on this developing story.
The director of the besieged Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza is refusing Israeli orders to shut the hospital down and evacuate. “As long as there are patients, I won't leave,” Dr. Hossam Abu Safia told Drop Site News. “I’ve been here since the genocide started, and I am determined to continue helping my people.”
The attack on the hospital comes amid a wider, vicious assault, with Israeli forces issuing new displacement orders for nearly all of northern Gaza on Sunday, where at least 400,000 people remain. Last month, reports emerged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was considering a plan to lay siege to northern Gaza and ethnically cleanse the entire area of Palestinians. The plan, known as the “General’s Plan,” was launched in an Israeli television campaign in September. Over the past week, Israeli forces have moved into areas of northern Gaza, conducting heavy airstrikes and shelling, and besieging the Jabaliya refugee camp.
Shortly after Drop Site spoke with Abu Safia, there were reports that the hospital received 16 bodies and 17 injured in an Israeli attack on Al-Yaman Al-Saeed Hospital in Jabaliya.
The Kamal Adwan Hospital is one of three hospitals in northern Gaza, including the Indonesian and Al-Awda hospitals, to receive evacuation orders on Tuesday by the Israeli military to clear out all their staff and patients within 24 hours, threatening that if they didn’t, they would face “the same fate as al-Shifa hospital, with destruction, killing and arrest,” according to a statement by the ministry of health in Gaza. The statement also said Israeli forces had surrounded the Kamal Adwan hospital and opened fire on its administration office. Israeli forces raided Al-Shifa hospital — Gaza’s largest — for a second time in March, setting buildings alight and destroying much of the complex. Mass graves with hundreds of bodies were found in and around the hospital after Israeli troops withdrew from the area in early April.
Kamal Adwan is the only partially functioning hospital in northern Gaza that specializes in treating babies and providing dialysis. There are some sixty patients remaining in the hospital from newborns to the elderly. “They are mostly war-wounded,” Abu Safia said. “We also handle other types of patients and treat viral diseases, but Israeli forces are encircling the hospital and we lack everything here, we are unable to continue doing our work properly.”
“Patients are still receiving medical care in the hospital. People are forced to walk the streets under the bombs to try and come for treatment,” Abu Safia said. “But we are operating at a very minimum capacity. There is not enough medical equipment and supplies and not enough fuel to run the hospital. This place is just devoid of everything.”
On the one-year anniversary of the launch of Israel’s assault, the health ministry issued a series of reports on the attack on the health care system over the past 12 months, including a total of 23 out of 36 hospitals being destroyed or ceasing to function, 130 ambulances destroyed or rendered inoperational, 986 people in the health care sector killed, and more than 300 medical staff imprisoned.
“Israel needs to cease its attacks on medical facilities,” Abu Safia said. “To keep our people safe and enable us to carry on offering healthcare services, it must adhere to the law. It cannot continue to harm us and target hospitals when there are just one or two hospitals treating thousands of patients. Dialysis, pediatric care, and numerous other treatments are offered here. The hospital serves as a major medical hub in this area. We call out the world to stop them.”
“These forced mass evacuations of homes and bombing of neighborhoods by the Israeli forces are turning the north of Gaza into an unlivable wasteland, effectively emptying out the whole north of the Strip of Palestinian life.”
Israeli tanks and troops have encircled and invaded the Jabaliya refugee camp, laying siege to the area for days with reports of house demolitions, artillery shelling, and dead bodies in the streets. On Wednesday, the health ministry said 45 people were confirmed killed and 130 wounded over the previous 24 hours across Gaza.
Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif today reported: “Since the beginning of the war, attempts to displace the residents of the north have not stopped, but what is happening today in terms of a stifling siege on Jabaliya camp and a complete disruption of the medical system due to the intensive bombing of homes, hospitals and shelters represents the most dangerous stage.”
Meanwhile, the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA has been forced to shut down lifesaving services in the north with seven schools sheltering displaced people being evacuated. Only 2 out of 8 water wells are now operational in Jabaliya and Israeli troops also shelled the al-Shulufa bakery, in al-Fallujah, setting it alight and destroying the only bakery in northern Gaza.
“These forced mass evacuations of homes and bombing of neighborhoods by the Israeli forces are turning the north of Gaza into an unlivable wasteland, effectively emptying out the whole north of the Strip of Palestinian life. To make matters worse, no humanitarian supplies have been allowed to enter the area since 1 October,” Sarah Vuylsteke, Médecins Sans Frontières project coordinator in Gaza, said in a statement.
Abubaker Abed is a journalist from Deir al-Balah.
Updates, October 10, 2024:
An update on the situation from Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza from Dr. Eid Sabah, the director of nursing at the hospital:
Fuel in the hospital has run out. Israeli forces blocked the entry of fuel into the hospital three days before the launch of this latest military campaign in northern Gaza. This means that the electricity generators and oxygen stations will stop, putting the patients in intensive care units and the neonatal unit, most of whom rely on ventilators, at severe risk. As of now, they expect that electricity and oxygen production will stop by tomorrow morning.
The hospital has been directly targeted for over five days by drones, smoke bombs, and artillery shells near the hospital, on the hospital’s roof, and through its windows. As of now, none of the hospital workers have been able to leave. The hospital director, Dr. Hossam Abu Safieh, has tried several times to coordinate a safe evacuation for some staff and patients, but no one has responded to him yet.
“Northern Gaza is under a fierce attack, a genocide. Bombings and killings are happening everywhere. Fear and terror have spread through every street and alley. The hospital is in a terrible state, and unless the international community and the World Health Organization intervene to save Kamal Adwan Hospital from this brutal assault, the situation will become catastrophic,” Sabah said.
“It is unthinkable for the medical staff—doctors, nurses, and technicians—to abandon the patients. There are patients in surgery wards, maternity wards, and children’s wards who need care. Moreover, the injured who come to the hospital for treatment cannot be left behind. We will continue to provide them with all they need, even with the limited resources and staff available.”
Since the beginning of this assault, Kamal Adwan Medical Complex has received more than 100 bodies and over 300 injuries, most of them severe, requiring surgeries and intensive care, according to Sabah. Most of those needing intensive care have been children.
A voice note we received late last night from Jabaliya, which we thought was worth sharing in full:
We are currently displaced south of Jabaliya. We were displaced 4 days ago [on Monday] due to artillery shelling. What forced us to leave was that a house next to us was targeted by an Israeli airstrike, killing everyone in it. Then there was random artillery shelling, which forced us to take shelter in the basement. We could hear the sound of people and their screams, but none of us could go out to help.
The bombing continued from around 4 p.m. on Saturday until the morning of the second day. During the evening there were terrifying moments. We were in the basement, sleeping there, because we thought it was the safest place in the house, away from the windows but we could hear the sound of the bombs and the rubble falling everywhere in every strike. This was the worst night before we left the neighborhood. On the morning of the second day, we were able to go… We took a few essentials with us, were weren’t able to take enough things to help us adapt to the new place — clothes, food, of things like that — because we left under bombing and shelling that was coming down everywhere.
The second thing that convinced us to leave was when we learned that the army had advanced into the area. So this convinced us because this is not the first time we are displaced, this is the fourth. And we know how the military operates and how in any moment they can enter an area and when they come in they don’t have mercy on anyone and especially because our relatives were besieged on the eastern side and they tried calling out for help but the military didn’t allow them and after they did allow them it was after hours of torture and waiting and their being besieged inside their houses.
That’s aside from the targeting of some of them by quadcopter. So that was another reason we displaced to another area on the basis that it could be an area that was somewhat safe. But even the area we displaced to was targeted, especially the schools sheltering the displaced, and specifically the al-Rafai school where we displaced to four about 3 or 4 days — it was targeted twice. And today it was targeted and 3 people were killed and around 14 wounded — that’s just the latest numbers.
Regarding the general situation, right now the Jabaliya refugee camp is completely surrounded, all the openings are closed. Moving around the camp is forbidden, or no one is allowed out or in. And they have put barricades or sand barriers, the last one was at Abu Sharikh roundabout that was on the western side of the refugee camp where they raised large sand barriers to ban people from entering or exiting. And anyone who crosses these barricades is targeted without warning. Today an entire family was targeting that was trying to displace and leave the camp, they were targeted in cold blood.
The disastrous situation affecting the displaced, either inside the refugee camp or in the city, is with regard to food and supplies. There are no medical supplies, food supplies, or water supplies as a result of their blocking of food supplies firstly. And secondly, the military has taken control of the areas the most important storage facilities and warehouses, where aid is stored and distributed. And even the agricultural lands where people can grow a limited amount of vegetables have been bulldozed or surrounded or people can’t reach those areas. So this is causing a deficit in supplies, food. And people are terrified that there will be a second famine like the one four months ago.
Generally, whether inside or outside the camp in Jabaliya or in the surrounding areas, anyone moving in the streets is targeted by shelling or quadcopters. For example, today we tried to go back to the house to try to gather some things - clothes, sheets, essential items but the area was bombed twice then it was shelled in a random way. So we had to leave our things and try to get out under fire. So any person who tried to move in this areas is targeted without warning and without distinguishing if they are civilian or non-civilian.
Among the terrifying things we are living through is they target anyone, even medical teams and emergency crews are unable to reach the area except after a long period of time after the military allows them and most of the time they don’t allow them for hours and by then the wounded become martyrs. Yesterday one of my friends was targeted and he was wounded and we tried to call for emergency rescue but when they went in they were targeted. So we waited for hours and he was martyred and went to the mercy of God.
We are literally living through a genocidal war and hunger and massacres which happen every day. What’s regrettable is that there is a media blackout on what is happening, especially because this has reached Lebanon and Iran and the army can single us out and conduct their violations and crimes without any accountability or coverage for these massacres. Even the journalists who are covering it now, are targeted in one way or another. Today a journalist was killed and a cameraman was wounded and yesterday or the day before, a journalist was targeted and he is now in intensive care. So the army is preventing anything that would document the crimes in northern Gaza in general and in Jabaliya especially.
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Shame on the USA. I refuse to vote for both sides that support a genocide
Israeli cowards that use their childish army to perform their evil deeds by killing civilians instead of fighting army to army.