Israeli forces surround northern Gaza hospital and order evacuation, says director

By Abeer Salman, Irene Nasser, Ibrahim Dahman and Dana Karni, CNN

(CNN) — The Israeli military surrounded one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, ordering patients and staff to evacuate and remove their clothing, say eyewitnesses, as concern grows for those who remain in the facility.

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 Friday.

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

The World Health Organization (WHO) raised concern about the hospital on Friday, saying the raid has put the “last major health facility in north Gaza out of service.” It also warned that at least “60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition, including those on ventilators, remain in the hospital.”

Some staff members accused the Israeli military of starting a fire. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has denied any connection to the blaze. “After preliminary examination, no connection was found between IDF activity to the fire,” an IDF spokesperson said on X.

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. 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 were sent to transport survivors to the Indonesian Hospital, the message added.

In a separate statement, the IDF told CNN that “there was a small fire in an empty building inside the hospital that is under control,” adding that it is “unaware” of allegations that the fire was caused by IDF gunfire. It added that its troops “are operating in the area of the hospital and not inside of it.”

The IDF said earlier that 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.”

“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.”

Israeli forces launched a renewed aerial and ground incursion in several parts of northern Gaza in early October this year, saying they were targeting a resurgent Hamas presence there. The two-month onslaught has razed streets to carpets of debris, killed entire families, and severely depleted food, water and medical stocks.

The Israeli military has fired on Kamal Adwan Hospital on a daily basis, and raided the facility at least six times since October 5, Abu Safiya told CNN earlier this month. Four doctors were killed at the hospital after Israeli forces stormed the compound, killing and injuring dozens of people in surrounding areas, eyewitnesses told CNN in early December.

‘Death surrounds us’

Two nurses told CNN that after the IDF told patients and staff to leave the building, Israeli troops rounded them up and separated them by gender – a process that took over two hours.

The IDF told men and women to remove their clothes and headscarves, Shorouq Saleh Al-Rantisi, a nurse working in the laboratory at Kamal Adwan Hospital, said on Friday. “Those who refused to remove their clothing were beaten,” she said. “I didn’t have a phone but those who were refusing to hand over their phones were beaten.”

Al-Rantisi said the IDF returned their belongings, before positioning a military vehicle at either end of the group of Palestinians and forced them to walk towards Shadi Abu Ghazala street in the Beit Lahiya neighborhood.

“(They) ordered us to take off our hijabs and clothes like the men, but we refused,” she told CNN. “The hardest part was the long distance we walked, and their demand that we remove our clothes was the most difficult. They did not respect that we are women; they looked at us and mocked us.”

Another nurse, who remains in Kamal Adwan Hospital, told CNN on Friday that Israeli forces are interrogating staff “one by one” inside a truck outside the hospital.

“All the young men who were at the hospital have been arrested, including my husband,” she told CNN. “They have assaulted the women, ordering them to remove their clothing as well, which we refused to do… Death surrounds us from all sides.”

‘Bodies remain in the street’

The hospital and its surroundings have come under an onslaught of Israeli attacks in recent months, Abu Safiya has said. Late on Thursday, about 50 people, including five medical workers, were killed after Israeli strikes nearby, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza and Abu Safiya.

Among the three hospital workers killed was a paediatrician Dr. Ahmed Samour, who was on duty on Thursday but went to the building opposite the hospital – where he and his family live – when the strike hit, said Abu Safiya.

Two paramedics were killed in a strike near the hospital while on their way there, the director said.

“The number of casualties reported in the media does not align with the information held” by the Israeli military, it said.

Israel says that Hamas operates inside and underneath hospitals, and is using them for military operations, including as command centers, weapons stores and to hide hostages. The Israelis have released footage they say is evidence of those Hamas operations. The videos do not offer definitive proof, and Hamas has denied the claims.

The WHO has previously said that Israeli authorities have repeatedly denied humanitarian access to Kamal Adwan Hospital and just this week said that a request to deploy international emergency medical teams was denied by Israeli authorities, “despite the need for immediate surgical interventions for injured patients.”

Israeli organization Physicians for Human Rights has filed an urgent petition with Israel’s High Court “demanding an immediate cessation of ongoing attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza,” a statement from the organization said on Wednesday.

The “petition presents grave evidence of the catastrophic impact on the hospital and its staff over the past year,” the statement says.

“Evacuating Kamal Adwan Hospital would abandon thousands of residents in northern Gaza without access to medical treatment for the sick and injured. Many of the patients currently receiving care cannot be safely evacuated due to constant gunfire in the vicinity and the military’s restrictions on ambulance operations,” the Israeli human rights organization added.

Ibrahim Dahman contributed to this report

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