Gaza City, October 27 (RHC)-- Israeli forces bombed five residential towers in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, killing at least 35 people, as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on the United States to stop the “systematic extermination of an entire population” in the Palestinian enclave.
In other news, Israeli forces detained medics and patients after a violent raid on a hospital in Gaza. Dozens of staff were detained and parts of Kamal Adwan Hospital damaged during Israeli raid on the facility in north Gaza.
The medical facility is in disarray after it was raided and shelled amid Israel’s three-week offensive in the north, with a top Gaza Health Ministry official urging the World Health Organization (WHO) to evacuate the wounded from the hospital considered a lifeline for people in northern Gaza.
“The smell of death has spread around the hospital,” Marwan al-Hams, director of field hospitals at Gaza’s Health Ministry, told Al Jazeera, adding that the Israeli forces destroyed the hospital’s medical supplies during their raid to prevent the medics from saving the wounded.
More than 600 people, including patients and those accompanying them were housed in the hospital before it was raided on Friday. Medics said on Saturday that at least 44 out of the hospital’s 70-member team had been detained by the army. Later, it was reported that 14 of those detained, including the hospital’s director Hussam Abu Safia, were released.
“A critical shortage of medical supplies, compounded by severely limited access, are depriving people of life-saving care,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief, posted on X on Saturday.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza said that the Israeli forces caused widespread damage to the pharmaceutical warehouse and the ICU.
“Everyone knows that Kamal Adwan Hospital is considered a medical lifeline for the two-thirds of Palestinians in northern Gaza.”
Outside the hospital, hundreds of spent bullet cartridges littered the floor. Footage shared by the Health Ministry revealed damage to buildings and vandalised wards.
Nurse Mayssoun Alian said Israeli forces surrounded the hospital in the morning “and there was shooting from all directions. “They evacuated all those who were sheltering here. They separated the men from women and made two queues. It was very humiliating for our men since they were stripped of their clothes,” she told Al Jazeera.
There was chaos inside the hospital with patients lying on the floor, including in the hallways, according to footage accessed by Al Jazeera. A patient and witness in the hospital told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces first shelled the courtyard at about 5am (03:00 GMT) on Friday.
“Thirty minutes later, bulldozers destroyed everything, including the tents housing the displaced,” he said. “They destroyed the hospital’s pharmacy and riddled the hospital with bullets. They started calling for Dr Hussam over the loudspeakers.”
At least two children died inside the intensive care unit when Israeli forces destroyed the generators and oxygen station on Friday, medics said.
