Israel accused of bulldozing Palestinians in Gaza hospital

BEIRUT — The Kamal Adwan Hospital was one of 11 facilities still operating in the besieged Gaza Strip and one of the few in the northern part of the enclave. On Sunday morning, the courtyard of the hospital complex was in disarray, showing signs of bulldozers that appeared to have stirred up the earth.

The day before, Israeli forces withdrew from the site after targeting it for days, alleging it housed a Hamas command center. A video taken by journalist Anas al-Sharif, which could not be verified, shows what he describes as pieces of bodies of injured people who had sought refuge and care in the hospital, and at one point, a cat “eating the flesh of the martyrs.”

“Dozens of bodies crushed by bulldozers,” laments the young Al Jazeera reporter, whose father was recently killed in an Israeli strike.

The Palestinian Authority’s Health Minister, Mai al-Kaila, called on Sunday for an “urgent investigation” and for the public not to overlook “war crimes,” after witnesses and medical staff accused Israeli forces of crushing to death the displaced people who were inside tents in the hospital courtyard.

Some witnesses told Al Jazeera that civilians were deliberately targeted and were “buried alive.” The Wall Street Journal cites testimonies from Dr. Hussam Abou Safiya, a pediatrician and chief doctor in the Gaza Strip for the American association MedGlobal, and a nurse speaking anonymously, reporting that hospital staff had buried deceased patients in the courtyard of the besieged facility.

According to them, the Israeli army used military vehicles, including a large bulldozer, to unearth and search the bodies before reburying them with the machinery. “They pushed them without any respect for human dignity, into what looks like a pile of rubble,” Dr. Abou Safiya states.

Deceased patients

The military operation around Kamal Adwan Hospital, which lasted two weeks, resulted in the death of around a dozen people due to dehydration, malnutrition or lack of care because of the stoppage of medical supply deliveries, Dr. Abou Safiya told The Wall Street Journal.

World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday he was “appalled” at the destruction of the hospital, which resulted in the “death of at least eight patients,” adding that a nine-year-old child was among the deceased.

The UN Human Rights Office has called for an investigation into the Israeli raid and the resulting deaths. The Israeli army justified its assault on the hospital, launched last Tuesday after days of siege and attacks, by claiming it contained a Hamas command center — as was the case during Tel Aviv’s deadly assault on al-Shifa Hospital in November.

The Israeli military thus released a video showing weapons that, according to them, were hidden in Kamal Adwan Hospital, including in an incubator for infants and a newborn resuscitation station, which they claimed to have discovered after interrogating people arrested on-site, many of whom were Hamas militants, they assert.

On Sunday, after the end of the raid, the UN declared that 70 members of Kamal Adwan’s medical staff were still detained by the Israeli military, including the hospital’s general director.

That same day, Israeli armed forces reportedly stated that their troops had communicated with the medical staff of the hospital before launching their offensive and that most people had evacuated, except for “a few dozen” civilians.

But according to Dr. Abou Safiya, as cited by The Wall Street Journal, 65 patients, including injured and many severely injured from the war, were still in the hospital at the beginning of the Israeli offensive. Nearly 3,000 displaced people had taken refuge in the hospital complex before the Israeli assault, fleeing the bombings and desolation in the north of the Gaza Strip, or in search of care in one of the few hospitals still in service in this part of the besieged enclave.

Faced with the urgency to care for patients seen in some Al Jazeera videos lying on the floor, the WHO declared on Saturday that it had delivered medical equipment and medicines so that the hospital could continue to serve “thousands of people” in need of care.

This article was originally published in French in L’Orient-Le Jour.