ISRAEL has destroyed part of the last functioning hospital in Gaza City.
Patients at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital were forced to evacuate as a pre-dawn strike on Sunday hit following an evacuation warning issued by Israel, according to Gaza’s ministry of health.
Dr Fadel Naim, director of Al-Ahli Hospital, said they were warned of the attack beforehand. In a post on Twitter/X, he wrote that the emergency room, pharmacy and surrounding buildings were severely damaged, impacting more than 100 patients and dozens of medical staff.
The health ministry said the strike destroyed the ward for outpatients and laboratories and damaged the emergency ward.
One child who previously suffered a head injury died as a result of "the rushed evacuation process" because medical staff were unable to provide urgent care, it said.
The hospital, run by the Diocese of Jerusalem, was attacked on Palm Sunday, which commemorates Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem.
Mads Gilbert, an emergency medicine doctor who has spent extensive time working in Gaza, says the attack on Al-Ahli Hospital is “a death sentence to anyone who sustains major injury or trauma or has a surgical condition, who needs surgery” in northern Gaza.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Tromso in Norway, Gilbert said the hospital is “a well-run, very important medical institution in north Gaza”.
Referring to Israel’s claim that Hamas was using the hospital, Gilbert said the Israeli military “has never, ever been able to show any evidence or proof that the Palestinian hospitals” were being used as “command centres”.
“What kind of cowardly, sadistic and completely amoral army will attack a hospital with sick and wounded people in the middle of the night?” Gilbert asked.
“I think I [would] actually prefer to be in hell than to be in Gaza now … because what’s going on is a very systematic, very cynical, and … sadistic way of undermining people’s capacity to live”, he said.
The medical facility - which was small before the war - is now the only hospital still functioning in Gaza City.
Hours later, a separate strike on a car in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza killed six brothers and their friend, according to staff at the morgue which received the bodies.
Israel said it struck a command and control centre used by Hamas at the hospital to plan and execute attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. It said that, before the strike, steps were taken to mitigate harm, including issuing warnings, and using precise munitions and aerial surveillance.
The strikes came hours after Israel’s defence minister said military activity would rapidly expand across Gaza and that people would have to evacuate from “fighting zones”.
Israel also announced on Saturday the completion of the Morag corridor, cutting off the southern city of Rafah from the rest of Gaza, with the military saying it would soon expand “vigorously” in most of the small coastal territory.
Israeli authorities have vowed to pressure Hamas to release the remaining 59 hostages, 24 believed to be alive, and accept proposed new ceasefire terms.
