[News] Israel attacks Gaza hospital five times in one week

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-attacks-gaza-hospital-five-times-one-week>
Israel attacks Gaza hospital five times in one week

Nora Barrows-Friedman
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/nora-barrows-friedman> Rights and
Accountability
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability> 29 December
2023
------------------------------
[image: A man walks in front of an ambulance, carrying an injured child in
his arms amidst a large crowd of people]

Only 13 hospitals, out of 36, are partially functioning in Gaza, according
to the World Health Organization.
APA images

Israel continues
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-forces-closure-gaza-hospitals-kills-dozens-al-shifa>
to attack
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-attacks-hospitals-gazas-north-and-south>
patients, physicians and hospitals across the Gaza Strip.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization stated
<https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1740045980945256844> that only 13 hospitals
– out of 36, before Israel’s genocidal attacks – are partially functioning.
Two hospitals are “minimally functioning,” the WHO assessed, leaving 21
completely out of service.

One of the partially-functioning hospitals is the Nasser Medical Complex in
Khan Younis, in the south, which is stretched beyond its capacity. The
hospital’s immediate vicinity has been repeatedly bombed.

As Israeli attacks “intensify near the hospital, ambulances, patients,
staff and WHO and partners will be unable to reach the complex, and this
key hospital will quickly become barely functional,” warned Dr. Rik
Peeperkorn, a WHO official.

“This scenario was witnessed all too often in the north. Gaza can not
afford to lose any more hospitals,” Peeperkorn added.
Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi, the head of plastic surgery at Nasser, described to Al
Jazeera on 25 December the exhausting psychological and physical toll that
Israel’s relentless attacks are having on healthcare workers. According to
the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza, hospital occupancy rates
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-78>
are now more than 200 percent in inpatient departments, and 250 percent in
intensive care units.

More than 100 ambulances have been destroyed, the health ministry reports
<https://t.me/MOHMediaGaza/4666>.
The WHO said it was “extremely concerned about the unbearable strain that
escalating hostilities are putting on the few hospitals across Gaza that
remain open – with most of the health system decimated and brought to its
knees.” Field hospitals have been established by local and international
healthcare teams, providing basic services to areas that have been
completely depleted of medical support. However such centers are by no
means adequate replacements for functioning, stocked and safe hospitals.

One physician at a field hospital, set up inside a school in Deir al-Balah,
central Gaza, only has gauze and disinfectant for treating patients, according
to
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/only-gauze-iodine-injured-patients-gaza-field-hospital-2023-12-22/>
Reuters.

Patients, he explained, are suffering from infections due to a lack of
sterilization and sanitizing equipment.
Serial targeting of Al-Amal Hospital

On Thursday, Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, was targeted
for the fifth time in less than a week.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) is headquartered at Al-Amal
Hospital.

A video shows PRCS staff receiving wounded persons after Israel bombarded
residential apartments adjacent to the hospital grounds on Thursday
morning.
The medical service stated
<https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1740372039507099684> on Thursday
that Israeli forces had targeted “the upper floors of the society’s
headquarters” with artillery shelling the day before, leading to a number
of injuries of some of the 14,000 displaced persons seeking shelter inside
the hospital campus.

The PRCS added that the Israeli shelling also damaged the radio
communication network, “the only means of communication” the service has
left, which now “poses a great challenge for emergency crews in reaching
the wounded and sick.”
The intensification of Israel’s bombardment in the vicinity of the Al-Amal
Hospital, the medical service warns, “may be a prelude to targeting it
directly.”

On 24 December, an Israeli sniper drone targeted and killed a 13-year-old
boy while he was playing with his cousins inside a room at the PRCS
facility at Al-Amal Hospital.
On 25 December, PRCS ambulance teams in Khan Younis came under Israeli
artillery shelling while recovering the bodies of several people. That same
day, medical workers say they were forced to evacuate the PRCS ambulance
center in Jabaliya refugee camp after Israeli forces “raided the building
and destroyed the ambulances.” More than 300 Palestinian health personnel
have been killed
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82>
in Israeli attacks since 7 October. Israel abducts, tortures physicians

Meanwhile, the Israeli army has detained around 100 health personnel,
according to the Palestinian health ministry, since 7 October.

Doctors, medical workers and hospital directors are being held “in harsh
conditions of torture, starvation and exposure to extreme cold,” the
ministry stated.
The director of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital, Muhammad Abu Salmiya
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/muhammad-abu-salmiya>, was abducted
and detained
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/25/who-concerned-about-al-shifa-chief-detained-by-israel-remaining-patients>
by Israeli forces in November.

On Wednesday, Francesca Albanese
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/francesca-albanese>, the UN’s special
rapporteur for the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, excoriated Israel
over the destruction of hospitals and the kidnapping and torturing of
medical personnel.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society reports that Israeli forces are still
detaining eight of its staff members, who were arrested more than a week
ago. They were taken to “an unknown destination, and their fate is not
known yet,” the PRCS stated on Thursday.

Awni Khattab, the director of the PRCS ambulance center in Khan Younis, was
taken and detained
<https://www.palestinercs.org/public/files/image/2023/News/112023/PRCS%20Statement%2027112023.pdf>
by Israeli forces more than a month ago while he was transferring injured
patients from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City to the southern Gaza Strip.
“We urge the international community to exert pressure on the occupation
authorities for the immediate release of our teams and to ensure their
protection,” the PRCS stated on 23 December.
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