As Palestinian medical teams struggle to treat the sick and injured in Gaza, they find themselves in direct confrontation with Israeli forces, whose attacks and raids on hospitals have prolonged.
Doctors in Gaza who spoke to the network are accused of “CNNThe Israeli army “desecrated bodies and shot civilians” in a hospital that Israel claims is a “Hamas command center.”
These charges relate to an eight-day operation carried out by the Israeli army at Kamal Adwan Hospital recently, in which doctors and patients testified about the actions of the Israeli army, which raided the hospital and bulldozed “the bodies of dead patients, allowed a military dog to attack a crippled man, and shot the doctors.” .
Humanitarian organizations confirm that medical facilities in Gaza have become unable to provide basic services.
The Israeli army says that “Hamas hides terrorist infrastructure in and around civilian institutions in Gaza, such as hospitals, and that targeting them is necessary because it works to eliminate Hamas in Gaza.”
The army did not respond to these accusations directly in its response to CNN’s request for comment, but it acknowledged that its forces were on a mission in the hospital where they “arrested 80 terrorists, some of whom participated in the terrible October 7 massacre.”
The Israeli army had previously published a video clip of the interrogation of the hospital director, and published an accompanying statement in which it said that he “confessed to using the hospital for military purposes,” while it was not clear whether this confession was extracted under duress or not, according to what the American network reported.
The International Committee of the Red Cross considers that publishing footage of the interrogation of prisoners of war constitutes a violation of the Geneva Convention.
On October 7, forces from the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas, stormed the border between Gaza and southern Israel and carried out an unprecedented attack that killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli authorities.
In response, Israel launched a violent air, sea and land attack on the Gaza Strip, which has so far killed more than 20,000 people, most of them women and children, according to the latest toll issued by the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-ruled Strip.
Testimonies describe horrific scenes. Israeli bulldozers pulled the bodies of the dead from their burial places in the hospital courtyard. Archive
The network says that one of the most serious accusations relates to Israeli army operations at Kamal Adwan Hospital: “While the forces were leaving the hospital complex, bulldozers were used to extract the bodies that had recently been buried in temporary graves in the hospital courtyard.”
The head of children’s services at the hospital, Hossam Abu Safiya, told the network, “The soldiers dug the graves and pulled out the bodies with bulldozers, then crushed the bodies with bulldozers.”
“I have never seen anything like this before,” he added.
Visual evidence seen by CNN showed decomposed human remains scattered throughout the hospital grounds.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said that Israeli forces forced hundreds of displaced people who took refuge in Kamal Adwan Hospital to leave.
Nurse Asmaa Tantish said, “The ground was plowed with corpses in the yard before our eyes… All the time we were screaming at them, but our cries fell on deaf ears.”
Agence France-Presse monitored what happened in the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital and said that it had turned into rubble, with Palestinians walking through the rubble to retrieve the bodies, while one of them cried loudly as he shrouded one of the bodies before burying them.
She pointed out that traces of tanks and bulldozers were clearly visible, along with great devastation.
In front of the hospital courtyard, Abu Muhammad stood crying, saying: “They demolished the building. They killed the doctors. Even the doctors were not spared from them. They did not leave anything.”
“My son is here,” the man confirmed with emotion in his speech to the agency, pointing under the rubble, “I don’t know how I will find him. Where are the Arab countries?”
As for Mahmoud Assaf, 50 years old, he came from Jabalia with a vehicle to evacuate two children from his relatives who suffered severe burns.
He said to AFP, visibly affected: “When I arrived at the hospital, I found massive, indescribable destruction. Patients are everywhere. There is nothing fit for life.”
He continued, “I found Hadi paralyzed, lying on his back under the chairs with everything on top of him,” explaining, “The two children entered the hospital ten days ago. As soon as they were withdrawn, I came to pick them up quickly.” They suffered burns all over their bodies, “without any eating, drinking, or care.”
He added, “There are other injuries from my relatives in the hospital that I cannot transfer.”
Abu Muhammad says, overcome by despair, “We are bored. They have been killing us since 1948, so let them spray chemical weapons on us and kill us so that we can rest instead of this torment.”
“Bigger than nightmares” Israeli forces surrounded the hospital for several days. Archive
Abu Safiya and other employees of the medical facility confirmed to CNN that the hospital “provides medical services only,” and that those arrested by Israeli forces were civilians and medical workers.
Abu Safiya stated that the Israeli forces had surrounded the hospital earlier, demolished its western wall, and asked any man to come out.
“What happened next was beyond nightmares for those who remained in the hospital,” he said, as he and four other doctors were allowed to stay to care for 62 injured people, including infants.
Abu Safiya added that the damage to the hospital was severe, as there was no care that could be provided, and the hospital was “empty of food, water, electricity, baby formula, and even medicines.”
Nurse Tantish remembers that she begged for water to no avail, adding that some “children died during the Israeli operation, and some nurses were trying to dilute the milk with a saline solution to feed more young patients in the hospital.”
Abu Safiya revealed that the pictures published by the Israeli army of what it claimed were armed men in the hospital were nothing but weapons owned by security guards, and they then ordered displaced young civilians and even some members of the medical team to carry them and photograph them.
Abu Safiya said that the Israeli forces were arresting and torturing members of the medical staff knowing that they had nothing to do with military operations. He pointed out that his colleague, the doctor Ayman Rajab, was arrested and after his release they shot him while he was returning to the hospital, but he survived and returned to his family.
He added that another doctor was hit by a bullet in his leg, while Abu Safiya’s son himself was hit by a bullet in his stomach.
Abu Safiya confirms that while he was surrounded in the hospital, he saw with his own eyes his injured colleagues and his son crawling along the road until an ambulance reached them and took them to another hospital.
Thousands of deaths in Gaza due to Israeli strikes. Archive
On one of the days of the siege, Abu Safiya found a wounded old man lying on the ground in front of the building, and when he tried to approach him, the soldiers started shooting and laughing. He said: “I survived the shooting, but the soldiers called me and asked to take the injured man inside again.” But it’s too late.”
In another incident, Israeli military dogs wearing cameras were sent to the hospital, and one of them attacked an elderly man using a wheelchair before he was stopped, “as the man was screaming in pain and the children and women were crying from the horror of the scene.”
He said, “The scene was beyond nightmares… because I could not help anyone. One of the soldiers came to take the dog and was laughing at the old man and what the dog did to him.”
“Shocking” destruction: A Palestinian man receives treatment after an Israeli raid near Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip, on November 22, 2023.
The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip called on human rights organizations to open an investigation into what it called “the Kamal Adwan Hospital massacre.”
The World Health Organization described the “literal destruction” of Kamal Adwan Hospital as a result of an Israeli army operation as “horrifying.”
“Several medical personnel have been arrested, and the World Health Organization and its partners are urgently seeking information about their situation,” said a post by the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on the X platform.
In response to this post, the Israeli mission to the United Nations in Geneva criticized the organization’s director-general for not indicating “an established Hamas presence inside the hospital,” according to Agence France-Presse.
This handout picture released by the Israeli army on December 19, 2023 shows soldiers operating in the Gaza Strip, amid continuing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (Photo by Israeli Army / AFP) / === RESTRICTED TO…
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed that the Israeli army, before entering the hospital, “initiated a dialogue in coordination with the medical teams.”
She said that the army gave a humanitarian deadline and that “most of the hospital was evacuated.”
But the story of the organization’s director general differs from the Israeli story, as he points out that “many patients were forced to evacuate themselves amid risks threatening their health and security, as ambulances were unable to reach the facility.”
He continued, “Among the patients who died, many died due to the lack of proper health care, including a nine-year-old child,” expressing “deep concern about the safety of the internally displaced people who took refuge in the hospital.”
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2023-12-23 23:47:43
