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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-attacks-gaza-hospital-five-times-one-week">electronicintifada.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel attacks Gaza hospital five times in one week</h1>
<p class="gmail-node__submitted">
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/nora-barrows-friedman">Nora Barrows-Friedman</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-blog"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability">Rights and Accountability</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">29 December 2023</span></span> </p>
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<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2023-12/281223_dair_el-balah_osh_1_0020.jpg?itok=gq6dN98Z×tamp=1703804895" width="440" height="293" alt="A man walks in front of an ambulance, carrying an injured child in his arms amidst a large crowd of people" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
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<p>Only 13 hospitals, out of 36, are partially functioning in Gaza, according to the World Health Organization.</p><small>
<span>APA images</span></small>
<p>Israel <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-forces-closure-gaza-hospitals-kills-dozens-al-shifa">continues</a> to <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-attacks-hospitals-gazas-north-and-south">attack</a> patients, physicians and hospitals across the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, the World Health Organization <a href="https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1740045980945256844">stated</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“This scenario was witnessed all too often in the north. Gaza can not afford to lose any more hospitals,” Peeperkorn added.
</p>
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 <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-78">occupancy rates</a> are now more than 200 percent in inpatient departments, and 250 percent in intensive care units.
<p>More than 100 ambulances have been destroyed, the health ministry <a href="https://t.me/MOHMediaGaza/4666">reports</a>.
</p>
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.
<p>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, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/only-gauze-iodine-injured-patients-gaza-field-hospital-2023-12-22/">according to</a> Reuters.</p>
<p>Patients, he explained, are suffering from infections due to a lack of sterilization and sanitizing equipment.</p>
<h2>Serial targeting of Al-Amal Hospital</h2>
<p>On Thursday, Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, was targeted for the fifth time in less than a week.
</p>
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) is headquartered at Al-Amal Hospital.
<p>A video shows PRCS staff receiving wounded persons after Israel
bombarded residential apartments adjacent to the hospital grounds on
Thursday morning.
</p>
The medical service <a href="https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1740372039507099684">stated</a>
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.
<p>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.”
</p>
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.”
<p>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.
</p>
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 <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-82">killed</a> in Israeli attacks since 7 October.
<h2>Israel abducts, tortures physicians</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, the Israeli army has detained around 100 health personnel,
according to the Palestinian health ministry, since 7 October.</p>
<p>Doctors, medical workers and hospital directors are being held “in
harsh conditions of torture, starvation and exposure to extreme cold,”
the ministry stated.
</p>
The director of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/muhammad-abu-salmiya">Muhammad Abu Salmiya</a>, was abducted and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/25/who-concerned-about-al-shifa-chief-detained-by-israel-remaining-patients">detained</a> by Israeli forces in November.
<p>On Wednesday, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/francesca-albanese">Francesca Albanese</a>,
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.
</p>
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.
<p>Awni Khattab, the director of the PRCS ambulance center in Khan Younis, was taken and <a href="https://www.palestinercs.org/public/files/image/2023/News/112023/PRCS%20Statement%2027112023.pdf">detained</a>
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.
</p>
“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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