Kamal Adwan hospital hit as Gaza death toll rises again

Kamal Adwan hospital hit as Gaza death toll rises again

Event date: 2024-11-04. Israeli airstrikes killed at least 12 Palestinians across Gaza, including attacks on the last partially functioning hospital in the north, Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya. The strikes came as Israel’s siege and ground assault on northern Gaza continued to intensify.

According to the evidence packet, at least seven people were killed in Beit Lahiya and five more in central and southern Gaza. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said the Kamal Adwan Hospital was being attacked by Israeli forces and that the bombardment was hitting all parts of the facility. Hospital director Hossam Abu Safieh called the situation catastrophic and said the army had not contacted the hospital before striking it. He said staff had been injured and could not leave.

The report’s Gaza correspondent said the hospital had been attacked before and was no longer functioning as a normal health facility. Instead, it was housing injuries and the dead brought in from nearby fighting. The broader point is that northern Gaza had lost much of its healthcare infrastructure by the event date, leaving civilians with very limited treatment options even as bombardment continued.

The packet says the Israeli military began its siege and ground assault on northern Gaza on October 5, saying it wanted to stop Hamas fighters regrouping there. Palestinians say the offensive and evacuation orders were intended to empty northern towns and a refugee camp to create buffer zones. Israel denies that. The article cannot resolve that dispute, but the evidence clearly shows the humanitarian consequences: a collapsing health system, repeated bombardment and more civilian deaths.

The same day, Israel told the UN it was ending ties with UNRWA, the main aid agency for Gaza’s residents. UNRWA’s commissioner-general said aid truck numbers had been cut to around 30 a day, far below what two million people need. An Israeli spokesperson disputed that there was any limit. Those competing claims matter because they show that the fight over Gaza was being waged not only with bombs but also through access to medicine, food and fuel.

By the event date, Gaza’s war had already killed more than 43,000 people according to the packet’s cited total. The strike on Kamal Adwan mattered because it hit a place that should have been preserving life in an area where few such places remained.

Kamal Adwan Hospital had already been under extraordinary pressure, so another strike around the facility was more than a single tactical event. It was another step in the collapse of health care in northern Gaza, where wounded people were being brought to a place that itself was under fire. The attack deepened the sense that the area had been left with almost no functioning medical buffer at all.

The hospital attack also reinforces how the north Gaza siege was affecting places that should have been protected under basic humanitarian norms. If the last partially functioning hospital can no longer operate normally, the burden shifts to civilians and first responders with almost no backup. That is what makes the strike on Kamal Adwan so consequential in the wider war.