On Friday, hospital patients were forcibly transferred to a nearby Indonesian hospital, which doctors warned was damaged and unusable due to a lack of electricity generators and water.
Id Sabbah, head of nursing at Kamal Advan, told the BBC that the military ordered the evacuation around 07:00 on Friday, giving the hospital about 15 minutes to move patients and staff into the courtyard.
Israeli troops then entered the hospital and took away the remaining patients, he said.
The IDF said it “facilitated the safe evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel” before the operation began.
Critically ill patients were transferred to a nearby Indonesian hospital, which itself was evacuated at the beginning of the week, which doctors called non-functional.
“You can’t call it a hospital, it’s more of a shelter. It is not equipped for patients,” Gaza’s deputy health minister, Dr. Abu-Al Rish, told the BBC on Friday.
Dr Sabbah of Kamal Advan Hospital said: “It is dangerous because there are patients in the intensive care unit who are in a coma and need ventilators and moving them will put them at risk.”
He said that serious patients should be transported by specialized vehicles.
The World Health Organization said the raid “knocked out the last major medical facility in northern Gaza”.
“Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burned and destroyed during the raid,” X posted on Friday.
Nadav Shoshani, the international spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said Friday night on X that “a small fire broke out in an empty building inside the hospital, which is under control.”
That was when IDF soldiers were not at the hospital, he said, adding that “after a preliminary investigation, no connection between IDF activity and the fire was found.”
The director of the hospital, Kamal Advana, said on Friday that about 50 people were killed, including five medical workers, in a series of Israeli airstrikes around the hospital.
A statement by Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya said that a building opposite the hospital was targeted by Israeli warplanes, killing a pediatrician and a laboratory assistant, as well as their families.
He said a third employee, who was working as a maintenance technician, was targeted and killed when he rushed to the scene of the first strike.
The two hospital orderlies were 500 meters (1,640 feet) from the hospital when they were targeted and killed in another strike, the statement continued, and their bodies were left on the street and no one could reach them.
On Friday morning, the Israeli military said it was “not aware of any strikes in the area of the Kamal Advan hospital” and was looking into reports of casualties.
The Kamal Advan Hospital in Beit Lahia is under a tightening Israeli blockade imposed on parts of northern Gaza since October, when the military said it launched an offensive to prevent Hamas from regrouping there.
The UN said the area is under “almost total siege” as the Israeli military severely restricts access to aid supplies to the area, where an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people remain.
In recent days, hospital administrators have made desperate calls to protect them, as they say the facility has become a regular target for Israeli shelling and explosives.
Oxfam said efforts by aid agencies to bring supplies to the area since October had been unsuccessful due to “deliberate delays and systematic obstruction” by the Israeli military.
Additional reporting by Shaima Khalil
