The Al Awda hospital, one of the only ones still operational in the Gaza Strip, is under a new siege by Israeli troops. The staff who work at the hospital report that Israeli tanks and snipers have been preventing anyone from entering and leaving the building, as well as ambulances, for three days. “We can’t move in front of the windows. “They attack anyone who moves in the building and its surroundings,” Mohammed Salha, who since the beginning of the war has worked as a volunteer in the center, which today houses 153 people, including patients, tells La Vanguardia from inside the hospital. , family members and medical personnel. “
The return of Israeli troops to northern Gaza, who have intensified their military offensive in the Jabaliya refugee camp and its surroundings more than a week ago, has become a new nightmare for this nearby center, which has been trapped by fighting on several occasions since the start of the war in the strip. In a December siege, the Israeli army killed seven people, including five doctors, and made several arrests, including the hospital director.
“After an attack on the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza on May 18, 34 patients were admitted to Al Awda, and, amid nearby fighting, the hospital has run out of drinking water,” Doctors Without Borders reported yesterday. Fronteras, which has staff working there. Salha warned that the artillery reached the top floor of the building and destroyed the building’s water tanks in the west wing. “We have had to evacuate the injured from the fourth floor to the ground floor, where the Emergency Room is,” he explains. They have fuel for only three days in a small generator that is used to recharge batteries and not all day, and medical supplies for ten days.
“Due to the escalation of hostilities, the hospital’s emergency medical team was relocated on May 13. We are deeply concerned for the safety of remaining patients and hospital staff. We call for their protection, for humanitarian access and for an immediate ceasefire,” the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote this Wednesday on X, the former Twitter.
Although Israel dismantled the Hamas battalions in northern Gaza months ago, the Israeli army has once again sent troops to fight in this area due to, they say, the return of troops from the Islamist group. In Jabaliya, a sprawling refugee camp built for displaced civilians 75 years ago, a military spokesman confirmed Monday that since they resumed their operation there, they have killed about 200 suspected combatants, where they also found the bodies of the four hostages rescued on last weekend.
Israeli forces entered the Jabaliya countryside on Tuesday, leveling residential neighborhoods with shelling and tank fire, and using bulldozers to clear shops and properties near the local market, residents said. There, an airstrike on a house killed at least three people overnight.
Health authorities and the Gaza Civil Emergency Service reported that dozens of bodies were still trapped under the rubble of destroyed houses and in the streets, but rescue teams had not been able to reach them due to the Israeli operation. “Israel is destroying the countryside over people’s heads, the bombing does not stop, and the world is asking for more food to enter Gaza. “We want to save lives, not extra food,” Abu El-Nasser, a resident of Jabaliya, who fled to nearby Gaza City, told Reuters.
The tanks also opened fire on the Kamal Adwan hospital in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya, according to its medical staff.