Israeli Forces Surround Gaza Hospital, Order Evacuation – Hospital Director

Staff at a hospital in northern Gaza say the building has been surrounded by Israeli forces who set fire to medical departments and ordered staff and patients to evacuate, after reports of a nearby airstrike that the local health ministry said killed about 50 people.

Israeli forces “are besieging Kamal Adwan Hospital and issuing orders for its evacuation,” hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya said in a post on social media early on Friday.

A nurse and a journalist inside the hospital, which is in the enclave’s Beit Lahiya district, said the same. In audio messages, they said people there had been ordered to leave the hospital and go to the yard of the compound.

Earlier on Friday, a video shared by nurse Walid Al Budi, who was also inside the hospital, showed a fire burning in its archive department. Heavy gunfire can be heard in the background.

The Israeli military had been “burning all the operating departments in the hospital,” Abu Safiya said in an Instagram post, adding that the military had evacuated all the displaced people and medical personnel from the hospital. Abu Safiya said that some staff had been detained and that a large number had been injured.

An audio message from staff at Kamal Adwan said that “surgical departments, laboratory, maintenance, and emergency units have been completely burned, and the fire is now spreading to the buildings.”

Ambulances have been dispatched to transport the injured to the Indonesian Hospital, which lacks medical supplies, water, medicine, and even electricity or generators,” the message said.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it had begun operations around the hospital based on intelligence “regarding the presence of terrorist infrastructure and operatives” there.

“The Kamal Adwan Hospital serves as a Hamas terrorist stronghold in northern Gaza,” the IDF claimed, adding that its troops are conducting “targeted operations in the area while mitigating harm to uninvolved civilians, patients, and medical personnel.”

“IDF troops facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients, and medical personnel prior to the operation,” it said, “with ambulances for transportation to additional hospitals in the Gaza Strip to ensure continued medical treatment.”

CNN/Shakirat Sadiq