GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike hit a hospital Sunday, killing at least seven people as the territory’s health ministry said the overall death toll has surpassed 45,514 since October 7, 2023.
The health ministry in Gaza said that 37 people had been killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours. The ministry that at least 108,189 people had been wounded in more than 14 months of Israel’s bombardment campaign, triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
Seven martyrs and several injured people, including critical cases, have been recovered following the Israeli strike on the upper floor of Al-Wafaa Hospital in central Gaza City,” a civil defence agency statement said.
Israel’s military said it had carried out a “precise strike” targeting members of Hamas’s aerial defence unit operating from a “command and control centre in a building that served in the past as the Al-Wafaa hospital”.
“The building does not currently serve as a hospital,” the military said.
However, the health ministry in Gaza said the hospital was still in use.
“The Al-Wafaa Hospital is partially operational, providing care to patients with physical disabilities,” the ministry’s director general, Munir al-Barsh, told AFP.
“The hospital had been rehabilitated and was getting ready to receive patients. Had it not been targeted by Israeli shelling today, it would have been ready to fully reopen in the next few days,” he said.
The strike on Al-Wafaa Hospital came a day after the military ended a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, an assault the World Health Organization reported left the facility empty of patients and staff.
The military also detained the hospital’s chief, Hossam Abu Safiyeh, saying he was suspected of being a Hamas fighter.
Since October 6, Israel’s operations in the Palestinian territory have focused on northern Gaza, where it says its land and air offensive aims to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
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However, the military has also carried out air strikes and shelling in other areas of Gaza as it presses on with its campaign against the militants.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces ordered any residents remaining in Beit Hanoun to quit the town on Sunday, residents said.
The instruction to residents to leave caused a new wave of displacement, although it was not immediately clear how many people were affected, the residents said.
Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place is safe in Gaza and that evacuations worsen the humanitarian conditions of the population.
Much of the area around the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and razed, fuelling speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.
The Israeli military announced its new push into the Beit Hanoun area on Saturday.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it had lost communication with people still trapped in the town, and it was unable to send teams into the area because of the raid.
On Friday, Israeli forces stormed the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza.
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The raid on the hospital, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza, put the last major health facility in the area out of service, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a post on X.
This morning’s raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital has put this last major health facility in North #Gaza out of service. Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid.
60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition,… pic.twitter.com/bD5eJgnVkR
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) December 27, 2024
Some patients were evacuated from Kamal Adwan to the Indonesian Hospital, which is not in service, and medics were prevented from joining them there, the Health Ministry said. Other patients and staff were taken to other medical facilities.
On Sunday, health officials said an Israeli tank shell hit the upper floor of the Al-Ahly Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza City near the X-ray division.
