On Friday, patients at the hospital were forcibly moved to a nearby Indonesian hospital, which doctors warn is damaged and unfit due to a lack of electricity and water generators.
Eid Sabbah, head of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan, told the BBC that the army ordered an evacuation around 07:00 on Friday, giving the hospital about 15 minutes to move patients and staff into the courtyard.
Israeli troops then entered the hospital and removed the remaining patients, he said.
The IDF said it “facilitated the safe evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel” before the operation began.
Seriously ill patients were transferred to a nearby Indonesian hospital, which itself was evacuated earlier in the week, and which doctors described as dysfunctional.
“You can’t call it a hospital, it’s more of a shelter. It’s not equipped for patients,” Gaza’s deputy health minister, Dr. Abu Al Rish.
dr. Sabbah, from Kamal Adwan Hospital, said: “It is dangerous because there are patients in the intensive care unit in a coma who need ventilators and moving them will put them at risk.”
He said that critically ill patients should be moved in specialized vehicles.
The World Health Organization said the raid “put the last major health facility in northern Gaza out of commission.”
“Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burned and destroyed during the raid,” X reported on Friday.
Nadav Shoshani, the international spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said in a post Friday night on X that “a small fire broke out in an empty building inside the hospital which is under control.”
That was when the IDF soldiers were not in the hospital, he said, adding that “after a preliminary investigation, no connection was found between IDF activity and the fire.”
Hospital director Kamal Adwan said on Friday that approximately 50 people were killed, including five medical staff, in a series of Israeli airstrikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital.
In the statement of dr. Hussama Abu Safiye says that the building opposite the hospital was targeted by Israeli warplanes, which led to the death of a pediatrician and a laboratory technician, as well as their families.
He said a third staff member working as a maintenance technician was targeted and killed as he rushed to the site of the initial impact.
Two hospital paramedics were 500 meters (1,640 feet) away from the hospital when they were targeted and killed in the second strike, the statement said, and their bodies were left in the street and no one could reach them.
The Israeli military said on Friday morning that it was “not aware of any attacks in the Kamal Adwan Hospital area” and was looking into reports of staff deaths.
Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia has been under a tighter Israeli blockade imposed on parts of northern Gaza since October, when the army said it launched an offensive to prevent Hamas from regrouping there.
The UN said the area was under “almost total siege” as the Israeli army severely restricted access for aid supplies to the area, where an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people remained.
In recent days, hospital administrators have made desperate pleas to protect them as they say the facility has become a regular target of Israeli shelling and explosives.
Oxfam said attempts by aid agencies to deliver supplies to the area since October had been unsuccessful due to “deliberate delays and systematic obstruction” by the Israeli military.
Additional reporting by Shaimaa Khalil
