Israeli forces attacked Kamal Adwan Hospital on Friday, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza, ordering dozens of patients and hundreds of others to leave and leaving part of the site on fire, Health Ministry officials said.
Elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people, including 15 in one house in Gaza City, medics and the civilian emergency service said.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that communication with staff inside the hospital in Beit Lahiya, which has been under heavy pressure from Israeli forces for weeks, has been lost.
“The occupation forces are inside the hospital now and they are burning it,” ministry director Munir Al-Bursh said in a statement.
The Israeli military said it had tried to harm civilians and had “facilitated the safe evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel before the operation,” but gave no details.
In a statement, he said that Hamas fighters, who previously controlled the Gaza Strip, had been operating from the hospital throughout the current war and had made the site a major stronghold.
Youssef Abu El-Rish, the deputy health minister appointed by Hamas, said that Israeli forces had set fire to the surgery department, a laboratory and a warehouse.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a small fire in a vacant building inside the hospital was under control. “Regarding allegations that the fire was caused by IDF gunfire, the IDF is currently not aware of such an incident,” he said.
Like the Indonesian and Al-Awda hospitals, Kamal Adwan was attacked again from the Israeli forces, which have been hitting the northern edge of the Gaza Strip for weeks, Palestinian medical workers say.
Hundreds have been ordered to leave a hospital in northern Gaza
Bursh, the director of the ministry, said that the army had ordered 350 people to leave Kamal Adwan for a nearby school providing shelter to displaced families. Among them were 75 patients, their companions and 185 medical staff.
Abu El-Rish said soldiers were moving patients and medical staff to the Indonesian Hospital, which had already been activated with heavy damage and had been evacuated by Israeli forces a day earlier.
Pictures circulating on Palestinian and Arab media, which Reuters could not immediately confirm, showed smoke rising from Kamal Adwan's area.
Much of the area around the northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya has been evacuated and destroyed, fueling speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza to end.
Israel says its campaign is to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping but will maintain full security control of Gaza after the war.
On Thursday, health officials said that five medical workers, including a pediatrician, were killed by Israeli fire at Kamal Adwan. The Israeli military said it was not aware of a strike at the hospital and that the report of the doctors' deaths would be investigated.
In a statement, Hamas blamed Israel and the United States for what happened to the residents of the hospital.
Israel's campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians, according to health officials in the enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million have disappeared and much of Gaza is in ruins.
The war was sparked by an attack led by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli figures.
