Medical staff at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza were reportedly burned alive when Israeli forces set fire to it on Friday, Al-Jazeera reported on Saturday, citing medical sources.
An Al-Jazeera correspondent in Gaza said that some people had fled the hospital, located in the Beit Lahia project in northern Gaza, and walked dozens of kilometres to Gaza City.
They said that as a result of the fire which Israeli forces started, some people had died in the hospital and their bodies had been burnt as a result.
The Qatar-based news network did not provide further details.
Israeli forces set fire to the hospital and stormed it on Friday, ordering medical staff and patients to leave. They had been besieging and attacking the facility – the last remaining hospital operating in northern Gaza – for weeks.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that around 350 people inside, including 170 medical staff, were ordered to gather in the hospital’s courtyard by the Israeli army.
Dozens of staff, including the hospital’s director, Hossam Abu Safiyeh, were detained by Israel and taken for interrogation.
Israeli television broadcast a clip showing the emptying of the hospital from “suspects”. It showed men who had been stripped of their clothing with their hands of their air, being led away under the threat of fire from an armoured vehicle.
Shurouq Al-Rantisi, a nurse at the hospital, told Al-Jazeera that Israeli forces beat the detained hospital staff after burning it and deliberately humiliated them.
An Al-Jazeera correspondent said that around 30 patients from Kamal Adwan reached the Indonesian Hospital, which has also been closed by Israeli forces, in critical condition.
With the destruction of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, there is no remaining functioning hospital in northern Gaza.
Israel has attacked the hospital for weeks, killing patients and staff, including doctors. It has imposed an intensified siege on the north of the Gaza Strip accompanied by ferocious attacks which kill dozens of people every day.
It is believed to be implementing a scheme known as the “General’s Plan” designed to kill, starve, or expel the area’s remaining inhabitants.
Commenting on the destruction of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese blamed Israel’s western allies for their continued support.
“Israel is writing one of the darkest pages in the history of genocides, with ‘Made in the West’ ink,” she wrote on the social media platform X.
Israel has so far killed at least 45,436 people, injured over 100,000 more, and displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s population in its brutal campaign against the territory, which is now in its 15th month.
