Israeli armed forces have targeted the Al-Ali Hospital of Gaza with rockets, destroyed the emergency unit and put the only functioning hospital in the north Gaza from the north, said Al Jazera correspondent.
Health officers of the hospital evacuated patients, while some of them, including critically ill patients, were forced to flee after the Israeli military issued a warning before the attack.
The air raid came “minutes after the warning of the army to evacuate this building of patients, the injured and their companions,” said the Palestinian civil defense in Gaza in a statement on Sunday.
“The bomb attacks led to the destruction of the surgical building and the oxygen generation station for the intensive care unit,” he added.
Hospitals that are protected under international humanitarian law have been repeatedly hit by Israeli air strikes in Gaza on October 7, 2023 since the beginning of the war.
“Critically ill patients, including those in the surgical and emergency units, are now left behind without protection or oxygen,” said Al Jazeeras Tamera’s Abu Azzoum and reported by Deir El-Balah in the North Gaza.
Razan al-Nahhas, an emergency doctor who was currently working in the Central Gaza, who previously worked in the Al-Nahli Hospital, said that at least three people, including a 12-year-old boy with a head injury, were reported dead after the forced evacuation.
The Israeli military said that the hospital had been targeted because it was used by the “terrorist organization Hamas” as a “command and control center”.
In his statement, Gaza’s government media office condemned the attack as “hideous and dirty crime” and said that Israel “deliberately destroyed and removed from service as part of a systematic plan to reduce the remains of the health sector in the Gaza strip.
In October 2023, an attack on the hospital killed 500 people.
Israel has repeatedly attacked hospitals in the Palestinian enclave during his devastating war.
