BERLIN (Reuters) – The United Nations health agency has no indication that a warning was issued before Israel’s bombing early on Thursday of north Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, the World Health Organization’s regional representative said on Friday.
At least 39 were killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Thursday, Palestinian medics said, including at least 20 in an attack that set ablaze tents sheltering displaced families in a crowded camp in the south of the territory.
The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya said a 16-year-old boy and several other people, including medics, were wounded by Israeli drone fire. There was no comment from the Israeli military.
Israel has accused Hamas militants of using civilian buildings including hospitals for operational cover throughout the 14-month-old Gaza war. Hamas has denied this, accusing Israel of indiscriminate heavy bombings and assaults.
The WHO’s Rik Peeperkorn said the fact that an attack on the hospital had occurred just a week after Israeli authorities had facilitated the entry of an Indonesian emergency medical team there was particularly concerning.
“Within one week, they feel forced, scared, whatever, to leave,” Peeperkorn told a U.N. Geneva briefing by video link. “That is extremely concerning and should never happen.” The hospital was now “minimally functional”, he added.
Hospital director Hussam Abu Safiya said on Friday Israeli forces had stormed into the complex overnight and ordered the Indonesian surgeons and some displaced people to leave, before withdrawing from the premises.
Peeperkorn said the WHO remained concerned at the slow pace of medical evacuations from the Israeli-besieged territory. At the current pace of evacuations, it would take five to 10 years to move Gaza’s 12,000-odd patients to places where they could receive care, he said.
Almost half the patients in question needed treatment for cancer and another quarter for war trauma. Congenital illnesses, heart disease and eye conditions made up the rest.
“We urge for a rapid and efficient use of all corridors to allow all patients to receive life-saving care in time,” WHO said in a separate statement.
The WHO had so far arranged for 266 patients to be evacuated to the United Arab Emirates, 22 to the U.S., 20 to Jordan, 15 to Romania and five to Belgium, it said.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt, Editing by Friederike Heine)
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