The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the Israeli Occupation Forces’ (IOF) escalating attacks on hospitals and health facilities in northern Gaza Strip, which culminated at dawn on Sunday, 18 May 2025, when they targeted the Indonesian Governmental Hospital and the Non-Governmental Al-Awda Hospital and besieged them under quadcopter drone fire. Both hospitals were forced out of service after the IOF prohibited the entry and exit of patients, medical staff, and vital supplies.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH), Israeli quadcopter drones are besieging approximately 40 individuals inside the Indonesian Hospital, including medical staff, patients, and the wounded. Continuous gunfire injured two patients as they attempted to leave the Indonesian Hospital, while its Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where four critically ill patients are being treated, was directly targeted. Two of these patients are facing imminent death due to the severe difficulty in accessing medical care within the unit.¹ Amid the complete paralysis of the healthcare system in the northern Gaza Strip, caused by the IOF’s destruction of the governmental Kamal ‘Adwan and Beit Hanoun hospitals, as well as the disruption of operations at the remaining health centers, PCHR warns that hundreds of thousands of residents are being left without access to basic medical care. This crisis is further exacerbated by the IOF’s escalating military aggression and bombardment, alongside the prevention of medical supplies from entering hospitals.

Dr. Mohamed Salha, Director of Al-Awda Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, stated that the hospital used to receive more than 100 daily cases of patients and the injured and perform between 7 to 10 surgeries. However, the pressure on the hospital doubled after all governmental hospitals in northern Gaza went out of service, increasing the number of daily cases to over 150, many of which were critical. Salha emphasized that the deteriorating security situation due to the IOF’s imposed siege this morning prevented medical staff from reaching the hospital.  This resulted in a complete halt of surgical operations and disruption of resuscitation and intensive care services due to fuel shortages and power outages. This resulted in a complete suspension of surgical operations and the disruption of resuscitation and intensive care services due to fuel shortages and power outages. Salha also pointed out that ambulances are no longer able to respond to rescue calls due to direct bombardment, resulting in an almost complete paralysis of healthcare services and posing a direct threat to the lives of the injured and patients.

PCHR affirms that this targeting is part of a continuous series of brutal attacks on major hospitals in the northern and southern Gaza Strip. PCHR considers these attacks a war crime that is consistent in pattern with the broader context of the crime of genocide that Israel has been committing on Gaza for more than 18 months.   This is in accordance with Article 2 of the Genocide Convention which codifies deliberate infliction of conditions of life on Palestinians, in this context, calculated to bring about their physical destruction, in whole or in part, through the systematic destruction of healthcare infrastructure and the deprivation of the population’s right to life and basic healthcare.

Over the last three days, Gaza Strip’s hospitals have received about 500 victims following the IOF’s bombardment of houses and residential neighborhoods², amid escalating massacres and intensified targeting of civilians across the Strip. Tens remain trapped under the rubble and scattered across the streets, as civil defense and medical teams have been unable to reach them.

From 07 October 2023 to 07 May 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) has documented at least 686 targeted attacks on the Gaza Strip’s healthcare sector, resulting in damage to 122 health facilities and 180 ambulances. These attacks reflect a consistent pattern of grave violations, including the destruction of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex and the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, severe damage to the surgical department at Nasser Medical Complex, and to the ICU and solar panels at Al-Durrah Hospital, rendering them non-operational, as well as the destruction of the emergency building and several other facilities at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital. WHO says At least 38 health service points are located within designated evacuation zones, with 110 more within a one-kilometer radius, threatening access to health care across the Strip.³

In a scene fully capturing the catastrophic collapse of the healthcare system, al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza, which operates at a very limited capacity following its destruction in March 2024, has issued an urgent appeal urging Gazans, who already suffer from hunger and lack of food, to donate blood,⁴ in a desperate attempt to save the lives of hundreds of wounded, who flooded to the Hospital for treatment due to the escalating bombardment of residential squares. Such urgent appeals from hospitals working under near-impossible conditions reflect the harrowing reality of patients who die from lack of medicine, shortage of blood units, the medical personnel’s inability to secure the bare minimum healthcare and a starving population being asked to save lives amid no life essentials. The ongoing collapse without any urgent international intervention warns of an uncontainable eruption of the humanitarian situation, putting the international community under a historic responsibility to save what remains from life in Gaza. 

PCHR reiterates that targeting and besieging hospitals and healthcare centers jeopardize civilians’ right to health and constitute a serious violation of the international humanitarian law, particularly Articles 18 and 19 of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.  These Articles grant special protection for civilian hospitals at all times and prohibit attacks on such facilities as long as they are not used for combat activities- a condition that is not applicable to Gaza’s healthcare facilities, and any claim by the Israeli forces in this regard has not been proven by any factual basis.  The targeting of civilian medical facilities is also a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and a violation of the right to health as codified in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

PCHR believes that the international community’s ongoing silence towards the crimes committed against the Palestinian population in Gaza, particularly the systematic crimes against the healthcare system and its facilities, is complicity that encourages the IOF to go further with their destructive policies without any deterrence. Moreover, the prevailing impunity granted for the perpetrators of these crimes undermines the international legal system and threatens the principles of justice and peace in the region and worldwide.

In light of this catastrophic collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system and its direct threat to the lives of thousands of wounded and patients, PCHR reiterates its call upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions, to take immediate and tangible action to stop these serious violations, provide urgent protection for hospitals and medical personnel, and guarantee the immediate flow of medical supplies, fuel and humanitarian aid without any delay.

1. Palestinian Ministry of Health, press statement, 18 May 2025, link: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Y3WFvcNTZ/ ↩︎
2. Palestinian Ministry of Health, press statement, 18 May 2025, link: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BzNBfsKv4/ ↩︎
3. WHO: https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/Sitrep_58s.pdf?ua=1 ↩︎
4. Urgent Appeal for Blood Donation to al-Shifa Medical Complex, 18 May 2025:
   https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1974X8LNq9/ ↩︎