12/17/2023-|Last update: 12/17/2023 11:33 PM (Mecca time)
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip revealed on Sunday that Israeli forces unleashed dogs on medical staff and displaced people at Kamal Adwan Hospital, north of the Strip, which mauled a wounded Palestinian before he was martyred.
This came during a press conference held by the Director General of the Ministry of Health, Mounir Al-Bursh, with the Medical Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hossam Abu Safia, in the hospital courtyard.
During the conference, Israeli soldiers, stationed in buildings surrounding the hospital, fired machine guns at the hospital courtyard at a point close to the conference participants.
After that, the organizers moved the conference to another area inside the hospital, and Doctor Al-Barsh said that they were exposed to direct fire from Israeli army soldiers.
During the conference, the Director General of the Ministry of Health reviewed the events that took place in the hospital during the period of its siege and storming by Israeli forces.
He said, “The occupation imposed a siege on the hospital and committed a war crime by targeting the hospital.”
Vehicle crime
He added, “The compound crime consisted of besieging the hospital, preventing supplies from it, storming it, destroying part of its facilities, attacking medical staff, patients, and displaced people, and arresting more than 70 of them.”
He continued, “The Israeli forces conducted field investigations with medical personnel and used them as human shields at gunpoint.”
Al-Barash pointed out that “since the beginning of its siege, the hospital was subjected to intense targeting, including bombing its gate and its surroundings, direct fire on its buildings, and bombing its second floor.”
He pointed out that “the hospital director, Ahmed Al-Kahlot, was arrested and taken to an unknown destination until today (Sunday).”
“During the period of siege of the hospital, the displaced and medical staff were gathered in a large basin designated for collecting sewage water, and they were stripped naked, humiliated, and wild dogs were released on them,” according to Al-Barsh.
He pointed out that “Israeli bulldozers destroyed the hospital’s oxygen station, the water well, the central archive, and the pharmacy.”
He also stated that “the bulldozers dug a deep hole inside the hospital, and swept away the bodies of dead people who were in the square.”
He called for an urgent international investigation into this “heinous, complex crime committed by Israeli forces against Kamal Adwan Hospital.”
Neighborhoods swept away by Israeli bulldozers
For his part, Hossam Abu Safiya, medical director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said during the same conference that, “On the first day of the siege of the hospital on the fifth of December, the Israeli forces asked everyone to go out to the square with their hands raised.”
He added: “After everyone left the square, the Israeli forces brought light weapons and gave them to the displaced people, and they took pictures of them carrying them without (overall) clothes.”
Abu Safiya revealed that, “During their storming of the hospital, the Israeli forces gathered everyone on one floor and unleashed dogs on them, mauling the body of a wounded 75-year-old man, before he was martyred on the second day.”
He expressed his belief that “there are neighborhoods swept away by Israeli bulldozers along with the bodies of martyrs in the hospital courtyard.”
On Saturday evening, Israeli army spokesman Avichai Adraee announced the end of military operations at Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Adraei stated, in a statement, “the completion of activity in the Kamal Adwan Hospital complex.”
He pointed out that during the operation, the army arrested about 90 people, claiming that some of them “participated in the bloody attack (on the border of the Gaza Strip) on the seventh of last October.”
The same spokesman claimed that the occupation forces “destroyed terrorist infrastructure in the area, and found many weapons, secret documents, and tactical communications devices.”
Demand an international investigation
On Saturday, Palestinian Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila called for an investigation into information indicating that the Israeli army buried citizens alive in the yard of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip.
In turn, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded, on Saturday, in a statement, “an immediate international investigation into the initial reports that the occupation committed heinous and horrific crimes in the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital.”
Since the end of the temporary humanitarian truce in the Gaza Strip at the beginning of this December, the Israeli army has intensified its raids on the north and center of the Strip, and has also targeted facilities housing displaced persons and hospitals, the latest of which was the storming of Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Since the seventh of last October, the Israeli army has been waging a devastating war on Gaza that, as of Friday, has left 18,800 people dead and 51,000 injured, most of them children and women, in addition to massive destruction of infrastructure and an “unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe,” according to Palestinian and UN sources.
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2023-12-17 20:09:14
