Strike on Gaza Hospital Destroys UN Supplies, Palestinian Officials Say

Israeli troops had withdrawn from Kamal Adwan Hospital after arresting most of the medical staff. The Israeli military said it was “unaware of a strike” there.

Israeli forces struck one of the last functioning hospitals in besieged northern Gaza on Thursday, destroying a stockpile of medical supplies that had been delivered to the facility days ago by the World Health Organization, according to Palestinian officials and a spokeswoman for the U.N. agency.

The Israeli military said it was “unaware of a strike” on the facility, Kamal Adwan Hospital, but said it was reviewing the reports. Israeli troops withdrew from the hospital on Monday after a three-day raid during which they arrested most of the medical staff and two children died, Gazan health officials said.

The military said the people it detained in that raid were suspected of being fighters with the militant group Hamas, which led the attack on southern Israel last October that set off the war in Gaza. The medical charity Doctors Without Borders said on Thursday that Dr. Mohammed Obeid, an orthopedic surgeon working for the organization, was among those being held.

“We are extremely alarmed by the detention of our colleague,” the group said. “His work has saved countless lives.”

On Thursday, Israel repeated its assertion that Hamas “has embedded terrorist infrastructure and operates within the Kamal Adwan Hospital.” Gazan officials have denied that claim.

The Gazan health ministry said that the strike on Thursday had significantly damaged “the remaining medicines and medical supplies” at the hospital, in the northern town of Jabaliya. The W.H.O. spokeswoman, Dalia Mohsen, confirmed the health ministry’s account.

⁠Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyah, the hospital’s director, pleaded for help in a recorded message that was shared on Thursday by Dr. Munir Al Barsh, the director general of the health ministry. In it, Dr. Abu Safiyah asked “anyone with surgical expertise” who might hear the message to immediately report to Kamal Adwan Hospital.

“We currently have no surgeons on site,” he said. “There are children with abdominal shrapnel injuries who need exploratory surgery and bleeding control before it is too late.”

Dr. Al Barsh, the health ministry official, said Israeli forces had also fired directly at the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, another area of northern Gaza that has been struck repeatedly in recent days.

The Israeli military began a major offensive in northern Gaza almost a month ago to combat what it described as a Hamas resurgence in the area. The United States and others have criticized the steep humanitarian toll of the operation.

When the offensive began, Israeli forces ordered three hospitals in the area to evacuate, including Kamal Adwan. But people sheltering in the area said they were penned in by Israeli fire, among roughly 400,000 people that U.N. agencies estimate have been trapped in the area.

This week, Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza, an emergency rescue group, said the Israeli offensive had killed more than 1,000 people in northern Gaza. He did not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

The rescue group said that it had “forcibly suspended” its operations across all of northern Gaza because of the offensive, and that the Israeli military had seized its fire trucks, ambulances and other vehicles.

Israeli forces have besieged and raided Kamal Adwan Hospital multiple times since the war began. Its raid last week came a day after the W.H.O. had delivered medical supplies to the facility and agency officials said it was struggling to function. The Israeli military said it had assisted with the W.H.O. deliveries and with escorting 23 patients and their caregivers to another hospital in the territory.

Israeli forces arrested 44 health care workers at the hospital during the raid the next day, said the W.H.O. director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Israel has long accused Hamas of exploiting hospitals and other civilian infrastructure in Gaza to shield its military operations. It has publicized what it says is evidence that Hamas operates from within hospitals, including by showing reporters a fortified tunnel constructed underneath the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

An investigation by The New York Times suggested that Hamas had used the Shifa Hospital for cover and stored weapons there. But the Israeli military has struggled to prove its assertion that Hamas maintained a command-and-control center under that hospital complex.

Also Thursday, Israeli forces continued to operate in the occupied West Bank, where they have conducted repeated raids in recent weeks. Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian Authority, reported that the military had demolished an office of UNRWA, the main U.N. agency that assists Palestinians, in the Nur Shams area of the city of Tulkarm.

But the Israeli military and eyewitnesses in Tulkarm said that report was false, although in different ways.

The military said the UNRWA complex, which had been in ruins for months, was damaged by bombs that had been planted close to it, an effort to attack Israeli soldiers.

Hakeem Abu Safiye, an official at Tulkarm’s emergency response office, said that the perimeter walls of the compound were knocked down by Israeli military bulldozers, but that the dilapidated office itself still stood. Nihad Shaweesh, an official in Nour Shams, agreed with that account.

UNRWA did not respond to questions about the report. It came at a time of heightened tension for the agency, whose operations inside Israel were banned by Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, this week. Many of the bill’s provisions do not go into effect for three months.

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Fatima AbdulKarim contributed reporting.

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