DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza: Israeli troops stormed one of the last hospitals operating in the northernmost part of Gaza on Friday, forcing many of the staff and patients out of the facility, the territory’s health ministry said.
The Kamal Adwan Hospital has been hit multiple times over the past three months by Israeli troops waging an offensive against Hamas fighters in surrounding neighborhoods, according to staff. The ministry said a strike on the hospital a day earlier killed five medical staff.
Israel’s military said it was conducting operations against Hamas infrastructure and fighters in the area of the hospital, without providing details. It repeated claims that Hamas fighters were operating inside Kamal Adwan, though it provided no evidence.
Hospital officials have denied the accusations.
The Health Ministry said troops forced medical personnel and patients to assemble in the hospital yard and remove their clothes amid the winter temperatures. They were led out of the hospital, some to an unknown location, while some patients were sent to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which was knocked out of operation after an Israel raid earlier this week.
The ministry said troops set fires in several parts of Kamal Adwan, including the hospital’s lab and surgery department. It said 25 patients and 60 health workers remained in the hospital out of 75 patients and 180 staff who had been there. The ministry’s account could not be independently confirmed, and 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.
In raids, Israeli troops frequently carry out mass detentions, stripping men down to their underwear for questioning in what the military says is a security measure as they search for Hamas fighters. Although the AP doesn’t have access to Kamal Adwan, armed Hamas security men in civilian clothes have been seen in other hospitals in Gaza, controlling access to certain areas or the distribution of supplies.
Since October, Israel’s offensive has virtually sealed off the north Gaza areas of Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and levelled large parts of the districts. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were forced out, but thousands are believed to remain the area, where Kamal Adwan and two other hospitals are located. Troops raided Kamal Adwan earlier in October, and on Tuesday troops stormed and evacuated the nearby Indonesian Hospital.
The area has been cut off from food and other aid for months , raising fears of famine. The UN says Israeli troops had only allowed four humanitarian deliveries to the area from Dec. 1 to Dec. 23.
The Israeli rights groups Physicians for Human Rights-Israel earlier this week petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice seeking a halt to military attacks on Kamal Adwan. It warned that forcibly evacuating the hospital would “abandon thousands of residents in northern Gaza.” Before the latest deaths Thursday, the group documented five other staffers killed by Israeli fire since October.
Israel’s nearly 15-month-old campaign of bombardment and offensives in Gaza have devastated the territory’s health sector. A year ago, it carried out a wave of raids on hospitals in northern Gaza, including Kamal Adwan, Indonesian and nearby Al-Awda Hospital, saying they served bases for Hamas, though it presented little evidence.
Israel’s campaign has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, and wounded more than 108,000 others, according to the Health Ministry. Its count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. More than 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have been driven from their homes, most of them now sheltering in sprawling, squalid tent camps in south and central Gaza.
Israel launched its campaign vowing to destroy Hamas after the group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted some 250 others. Around 100 Israelis remain captive in Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israeli troops burn north Gaza hospital after forcibly removing staff and patients
https://arab.news/6wb4t
Israeli troops burn north Gaza hospital after forcibly removing staff and patients
- Kamal Adwan Hospital is one of only three medical facilities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip
- Israeli forces order dozens of patients and hundreds of others to evacuate the compound
Baghdad says it will prosecute Daesh militants being moved from Syria to Iraq
- The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq
BAGHDAD: Baghdad will prosecute and try militants from the Daesh group who are being transferred from prisons and detention camps in neighboring Syria to Iraq under a US-brokered deal, Iraq said Sunday.
The announcement from Iraq’s highest judicial body came after a meeting of top security and political officials who discussed the ongoing transfer of some 9,000 IS detainees who have been held in Syria since the militant group’s collapse there in 2019.
The need to move them came after Syria’s nascent government forces last month routed Syrian Kurdish-led fighters — once top US allies in the fight against Daesh — from areas of northeastern Syria they had controlled for years and where they had been guarding camps holding Daesh prisoners.
Syrian troops seized the sprawling Al-Hol camp — housing thousands, mostly families of Daesh militants — from the Kurdish-led force, which withdrew as part of a ceasefire. Troops last Monday also took control of a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, from where some Daesh detainees had escaped during the fighting. Syrian state media later reported that many were recaptured.
Now, the clashes between the Syrian military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, sparked fears of Daesh activating its sleeper cells in those areas and of Daesh detainees escaping. The Syrian government under its initial agreement with the Kurds said it would take responsibility of the Daesh prisoners.
Baghdad has been particularly worried that escaped Daesh detainees would regroup and threaten Iraq’s security and its side of the vast Syria-Iraq border.
Once in Iraq, Daesh prisoners accused of terrorism will be investigated by security forces and tried in domestic courts, Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq. On Sunday, another 125 Daesh prisoners were transferred, according to two Iraqi security officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
So far, 275 prisoners have made it to Iraq, a process that officials say has been slow as the US military has been transporting them by air.
Both Damascus and Washington have welcomed Baghdad’s offer to have the prisoners transferred to Iraq.
Iraq’s parliament will meet later on Sunday to discuss the ongoing developments in Syria, where its government forces are pushing to boost their presence along the border.
The fighting between the Syrian government and the SDF has mostly halted with a ceasefire that was recently extended. According to Syria’s Defense Ministry, the truce was extended to support the ongoing transfer operation by US forces.
The Daesh group was defeated in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later, but Daesh sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries. As a key US ally in the region, the SDF played a major role in defeating Daesh.
During the battles against Daesh, thousands of extremists and tens of thousands of women and children linked to them were taken and held in prisons and at the Al-Hol camp. The sprawling Al-Hol camp hosts thousands of women and children.
Last year, US troops and their partner SDF fighters detained more than 300 Daesh militants in Syria and killed over 20. An ambush in December by Daesh militants killed two US soldiers and one American civilian interpreter in Syria.
