Premature babies at risk as Israeli forces besiege Gaza hospital, director warns

Premature babies are among those at risk of dying if one of the remaining hospitals in northern Gaza follows Israeli orders to evacuate, the facility’s director warned Monday.

But even staying put poses a risk to 400 people, including patients, medics and sheltering civilians, who are in Kamal Adwan Hospital, according to its director Dr. Husam Abu Safiya.

Abu Safiya said that, over the weekend, tanks and bulldozers encircled the hospital’s western gates, with heavy gunfire continuously aimed at the facility located in Beit Latiya. 

“Bullets had penetrated the intensive care unit, the maternity department, and the specialized surgery department,” he said in a statement issued via WhatsApp. 

On Telegram, Gaza’s Health Ministry also stated that the hospital was being attacked with explosives. 

There are 91 patients hospitalized, including women in the neonatal unit of the hospital, according to Abu Safiya.

“All types of weapons, including sniper fire, tank shells and quadcopters” have been used to target the hospital’s nursery, maternity ward and various other departments, he added.

By then, “thankfully,” patients had been moved to the hospital’s internal corridors, Abu Safiya said. 

The Israeli military declined to respond on the record to Abu Safiya’s allegations, but on Friday it told Reuters  it had sent food and fuel to the hospital and helped evacuate “more than 100 patients” and others.

In October, Israeli forces stormed and then withdrew from Kamal Adwan Hospital, leaving a trail of destruction after a dayslong siege and overnight airstrikes that killed dozens. United Nations’ human rights chief, Volker Türk, labeled the offensive one of the conflict’s “darkest moments” in the conflict.

Since October, Israel has renewed its military campaign in northern Gaza, predominantly in the areas of Beit Latiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, describing its efforts as a way to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping. 

Abu Safiya told Reuters in a text message on Sunday that shutting down the hospital would be “next to impossible,” as there are not enough ambulances to get patients out. “We cannot evacuate these patients safely without assistance, equipment and time,” he said. 

Aid agencies warn that the Israeli military’s latest order risks the lives of patients, amid an apparent increase on attacks on civilians. 

“The Israeli Military’s decision to resume attacks on an already damaged and under siege hospital whilst 400 civilians remain trapped inside, including babies in neonatal care, is a further violation of international law,” said Mahmoud Shalabi, Medical Aid for Palestinians’  deputy director in northern Gaza. 

“Announcing a forced evacuation order whilst refusing aid in or patients and staff out leaves little option to obey, even if patients could be safely moved,” he added. 

Phillipe Lazzarani, the head of the U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees, wrote in a post on X: “More civilians are reported killed and injured. Attacks on schools and hospitals have been commonplace.” 

According to UNICEF estimates, at least 4,000 babies in the Gaza Strip have been completely cut off from newborn care in the past year due to sustained attacks on hospitals, especially deadly in the north.

The war that followed the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 and saw 250 taken hostage has decimated Gaza. Israeli forces have since killed some 45,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and destroyed much of the enclave’s health system. 

Amid the collapse of the health care system, the Kamal Adwan Hospital has become a critical provider of essential services for pregnant women and children in northern Gaza. 

Before the war, eight neonatal intensive care units were in operation across the Gaza Strip. By November this year, three of those units had been completely destroyed in the north, with the number of incubators plummeting from 105 to just nine — all at Kamal Adwan Hospital, according to UNICEF.

“After the heavy attacks sustained by the hospital, it is unclear if the [incubators] remain functional,” said Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa regional director. 

She added, “Any newborn baby fighting to sustain its breaths from inside a hospital incubator is entirely defenseless and entirely reliant on specialist medical care and equipment to survive.”

Doctors have floated that the Indonesian Hospital, located just outside the Jabaliya refugee camp, could serve as an alternative for transferring patients from Kamal Adwan. But, they added that transporting patients and providing the necessary resources there would prove difficult. 

“The Indonesian Hospital has nonoperational generators, and there is also an oxygen station that is not functioning,” Abu Safiya said. 

Over the past several months, doctors and aid workers at the Kamal Adwan Hospital have repeatedly issued appeals for immediate action to safeguard Gaza’s health care system. 

“We have urgently called on the world to intervene and protect the health care system, and we continue to plead for immediate action to safeguard it from this ongoing attack,” Abu Safiya said in his latest statement.