The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) warns that hospitals in North Gaza are on the brink of a total collapse and might go out of service in such an utmost emergency and amid staggering and ongoing Israeli military operation entering its seventeenth consecutive day. On Saturday dawn, 19 October 2024, the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) deliberately bombed the upper floors of the Indonesian and al-‘Awda Hospitals and besieged the patients and medical personnel there at a time IOF have escalated their bombardment on the residential neighborhoods and civilian houses, destroying them on top of their residents.
PCHR warns of conducting deliberate attacks again on Gaza Strip’s hospitals and bombing them, inflicting fatalities among patients, medical personnel and displaced people in addition to imposing siege and forcibly evacuating them. Despite all efforts to rehabilitate partially some hospitals, IOF perpetuates once and again their attacks on them, leaving civilians with no hospitals for their treatment and thereby falling under the crime of genocide committed by IOF.
According to PCHR’s follow-up, Dr. Marwan al-Sultan, General Director of the Indonesian Hospital, said to PCHR’s field researcher:1
“On Saturday night, 19 October, IOF intensified their bombardment and gunfire on the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia. The tanks advanced to the proximity of the hospital at around 04:30, heavily shooting and shelling the entrance and the upper floors of the hospital, where there were 40 sick and injured persons in addition to 15 medical personnel members. As a result, the electricity went out, terrorizing the patients and medical personnel. Five shells targeted the second and third floors, but no injuries were reported as both floors are still under reparation. However, two patients died in the Intensive Care Unit due to the power outage.” Meanwhile, IOF bombed the upper floors of the al-‘Awda Hospital in Tal al-Za’atar in Jabalia, injuring members of the medical personnel, including one in critical condition as reported by al-‘Awdah Health and Community Association.
IOF have imposed a strangulating siege on North Gaza depriving its civilian population of supplies indispensable for their survival. Also, IOF’s forcible displacement orders have exposed Israel’s intent to empty the remaining residents in North Gaza by weaponizing starvation and denial of treatment to achieve their military aims, proving IOF’s entrenched perpetuation to commit genocide in Gaza.
For two weeks, IOF have intensified their military operation with residents’ refusing to leave besieged neighborhoods in Jabalia, its refugee camp and the other areas of northern Gaza Strip that had been totally cut off from Gaza City. Tens of thousands of civilians have been trapped in their homes enduring death and hunger with no access to life-sustaining necessities, including food and water and amid internet and communications blackout in addition to targeted attacks on hospitals, threatening to evacuate them and force them to cease their services despite the sheer number of critical injuries overwhelming the hospitals and tens of dead bodies piling up.
Due to the full siege and ongoing military operations, there are growing concerns that the three hospitals, Kamal ‘Adwan, al-‘Awda and the Indonesian, would go out of service and experience conditions similar to what they have experienced in their previous evacuations in November and December 2023. These hospitals are now operating at minimum capacity amid scarce resources due to previous attacks, chronic shortage of medical personnel, fuel, medicines and food, threatening the lives of the injured and more than 285 patients in these hospitals, including 8 newborns and 5 adults in ICUs and 161 patients in emergency departments. Many patients urgently need advanced procedures such as neurosurgeries, vascular surgeries, ophthalmic surgeries and plastic surgeries, which are all unavailable in these hospitals as reported by the Palestine Health Cluster. 2
Dr. Hossam Abu Safiyah, Director of Kamal ‘Adwan Hospital, said to PCHR’s researcher:3
“Over the past days, the hospitals have daily received 50 to 70 persons newly injured amid alarming surge of Israeli military attacks and scale of casualties with no supplies in North Gaza Hospitals. These hospitals have also operated amid scarce medical supplies and medicines and no fuel to operate its generators. Even patients and medical personnel have become exhausted following two weeks of a strangulating siege and food running out. All of this has ceased provision of life-sustaining services, creating a challenging reality that threatens the life patients and the injured in the ICUs and newborns in the only neonatal intensive care unit in north Gaza if the mechanical ventilation of 6 newborns in critical condition stopped working. The hospital also lacks advanced health services, most importantly neuro-orthopedic surgeries and reconstructive burn surgeries. These catastrophic conditions apply to all hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip with doctors having no choice but to prioritize cases coming to the hospitals and provide care only to those most likely to survive. Also, doctors had to perform amputations for some of the injured as they were unable to refer them to hospitals in Gaza City to undergo complicated surgeries. There is a dire need for referral of tens of persons injured for specialized neurosurgeries, vascular surgeries and ophthalmic surgeries; therefore, many patients and injured die requiring urgent appeal from international organizations to compel Israel to open a safe corridor for the evacuation of patients and the injured before it is too late.”
Fares ‘Afana, Fares Afana, the head of emergency services in the Medical Services Directorate, said to PCHR’s researcher that ambulances restrictedly move amid scarcity of fuel and IOF’s deliberate attacks on them as well as obstructing their work by cutting roads leading to the targeted areas. Also yesterday, IOF have cut the internet and communications services across northern Gaza Strip, rendering ambulances and civil defense crews’ movement incredibly difficult and delaying these crews’ response to daily distress signals in need of urgent intervention.
With the bombardment intensifying over the past two days and IOF’s declaration to explain their military operation, essential health services in maternity wards at Kamal ‘Adwan and al-‘Awda Hospitals have been affected in such a dire complex emergency. The lives of newborns in incubators and women with pregnancy complications hang by a thread amid growing concerns over the life of 9000 pregnant women in the besieged areas as 25 primary healthcare centers have ceased operations in north Gaza.4
PCHR believes the healthcare system in northern Gaza Strip is left alone to face a total collapse, siege of its facilities and attacks, sentencing thousands of patients and injured to death, in violation of international and humanitarian laws. Thus, PCHR:
