Extract from ABC News
The Kamal Adwan hospital is struggling to remain operating after a major attack by the IDF. (ABC News)
In short:
Palestinians who witnessed a siege on the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza have accused Israeli forces of beating patients, and destroying medical supplies and equipment.
The hospital is struggling to remain open, and is in the middle of one of the hardest hit areas of northern Gaza.
What's next?
The IDF said it detained 100 Hamas militants, and it is unclear what has happened to the men and whether they are still in Israeli custody.
A hospital is meant to be a place of refuge and care.
In recent weeks, the Kamal Adwan medical facility in Gaza's north has been anything but, despite the best efforts of the medicos who have been scrambling to keep the hospital running.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) laid siege to Kamal Adwan in their campaign to root out Hamas militants they have alleged had been hiding there.
Warning — details in this story may distress some readers
The IDF said it gave civilians an opportunity to leave the Kamal Adwan compound before it stormed the hospital. (ABC News)
Palestinians sheltering and seeking treatment at the hospital have given the ABC harrowing eyewitness accounts of the day troops burst into the compound.
They have accused Israeli troops of beating patients until they lay bleeding on the floor, destroying medical equipment and medication, using dogs to control and corral children, and stripping more than 100 men — sick, injured, hospital staff, and displaced — down to their underwear before taking them away.
The IDF said "approximately 100 terrorists" had barricaded themselves inside the Kamal Adwan hospital. (ABC News)
A hospital encircled
Northern Gaza has recently experienced some of the most intense bombardments of Israel's war with Hamas, which began more than a year ago.
The IDF has repeatedly insisted that Hamas militants, once believed to have been cleared from the area, have been regrouping and reforming in and around the towns of Jabalia and Beit Lahiya.
Israeli forces have besieged the region for more than a month.
Dozens of daily strikes have targeted what Israel said were Hamas fighters, command centres and weapons stockpiles.
Northern Gaza has been besieged by Israeli forces for more than a month. (Reuters: Amir Cohen)
This was why the Kamal Adwan Hospital has come into focus.
The facility in Beit Lahiya, in Gaza's north-east, has been labelled a Hamas hideout by Israel.
It said its operation on October 25 captured 100 militants who had been using the hospital's status as a humanitarian safe haven to avoid detection.
But eyewitness accounts have painted a deeply concerning picture about the actions of IDF troops.
The scale of the damage is hard to comprehend.
Patients inside, many of them children, lay on the few beds left undamaged — as stretched medicos tried to treat their injuries as best they could.
Few, if any, rooms are untouched — bullet holes in walls and windows, ashes and broken glass where equipment and supplies were smashed.
The wreckage of an ambulance even appears to have been thrown onto the roof of a building — such was the ferocity of shelling and blasts that hit the compound.
The Kamal Adwan hospital was hit with such ferocious bombardment an ambulance was apparently thrown onto a roof. (ABC News)
'There was so much bleeding'
As well as being a hospital, Kamal Adwan had become a shelter for around 300 Palestinians who had been forced to flee their homes across northern Gaza.
Sixty-four-year-old Jabalia resident Elham Abdallah Saleh Halim's two daughters-in law were killed in Israeli strikes, along with two of her grandchildren.
Others were injured, so the family moved to Kamal Adwan and found refuge in the paediatric ward where the children were treated.
The IDF launched a series of strikes over successive days on the area around the hospital before they entered the compound.
Elham Abdallah Saleh Halim was looking after two young relatives in hospital when the IDF raided it. (ABC News)
"They started bombing us with various missiles — there were missiles that created fire that burns human beings," she told the ABC.
Shortly after, she said the Israeli forces demanded that everyone in the hospital congregated in the lobby.
"All patients, everyone — the injured still bleeding, those without limbs, everyone came down to the entrance hall, even ICU patients," Elham said.
Men of all ages were separated from the women — they were stripped to their underwear, and taken to the streets around Kamal Adwan where they were tied up and beaten, she said.
Among them was Elham's 65-year-old husband.
IDF troops move into the Kamal Adwan hospital at night. (Supplied: IDF)
She said IDF troops next turned their attention to those who remained in the hospital.
"They beat all of them — the sick, the injured, the ones who were bleeding," she said.
"Some were bleeding so much that the floor was flooded with blood."
Israeli troops were looking for information about someone in particular.
"They showed a picture to everyone — even to the injured lying on the floor, those who could not talk, let alone move around," Elham recalled.
"They would ask someone 'do you know him' and would punch him in the leg and his head."
She said she had to intervene as IDF soldiers yelled at a deaf man.
After the ordeal, Elham said the Israeli troops took all of the men away.
"They locked up the hospital gate at us and they started firing at the hospital — they kept firing missiles and they withdrew and left," she said.
The area around the Kamal Adwan hospital has been described as a scene of devastation. (ABC News)
'They destroyed everything'
In a nearby room, Sanaa Redwan, 58, was sitting with two children.
She is their aunt, but stepped in to look after them when their parents were killed during the war.
She described the area around the hospital as a scene of "devastation".
"They burned down the houses and the fires kept burning all day long when [the IDF] withdrew," Sanaa said.
Saana Redwan said the IDF ransacked and smashed up the Kamal Adwan hospital. (ABC News)
During the siege of the hospital, she said women, children and patients were left standing outside the building at night for around eight hours.
While huddled outside in the cold with screaming children and newborns, she accused the IDF of leaving nothing untouched inside Kamal Adwan.
"They smashed up the hospital, all the floors, all the departments, all the rooms," Sanaa said.
"They even destroyed people's belongings, they broke the sick people's belongings — I swear to God, nothing was left behind.
"The people's canned food, they threw it all away — there were bags of flour which they ripped open and threw all around."
Saana Redwan's nephew was being treated in Kamal Adwan hospital. (ABC News)
Medical supplies deliberately set on fire
Nurse Nour Al-Tarabish described the moment the IDF stormed Kamal Adwan.
"There was a tank at the eastern gate and another at the western gate at the beginning, and there were quadcopters (armed drones) in all directions," she told the ABC.
"We noticed that there was an occupation soldier in a building close to us who was trying to break a hole in a window.
"Basically, they were positioning snipers."
Nour Al-Tarabish was in the Kamal Adwan hospital when the IDF attacked. (ABC News)
She said the IDF were trying to lure children out into the open, to ensure they could identify them and take photos using drones.
"The soldier was trying to throw coins on the stairs, so that the children would hear the sound and go towards it," Ms Al-Tarabish said.
"They also unleashed their dogs on the children, directly — there was panic and extreme fear among the children and the women."
She described the moment IDF soldiers searched the hospital room by room.
Nour Al-Tarabish said the IDF wanted to stop the hospital from functioning. (ABC News)
"We tried to give them the keys to the private rooms that had the medicine that we need later to keep functioning after they withdraw," Ms Al-Tarabish said.
"However, the Israeli army refused to even take the keys.
"They were breaking all the door handles — this was clearly a sabotage policy."
Filing cabinets were broken open with paperwork thrown into the air as the IDF continued their search.
"Even the medicines they were searching through — of course they were breaking them," Ms Al-Tarabish said.
"They burned them … they wanted to cause the hospital to stop functioning."
The charred remains of shelves of burned medicine sitting inside Kamal Adwan hospital. (ABC News)
IDF says Hamas militants hid at Kamal Adwan
Senior doctors at the Kamal Adwan hospital said it was the only hospital still operational in northern Gaza, and said attacks on the facility continued.
The hospital's director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, has been providing regular updates on social media about the status of the facility, warning there is a dire lack of supplies and staff to keep the hospital running.
The ABC has asked the IDF about its conduct during the Kamal Adwan raid, including why soldiers beat injured patients, destroyed medical equipment and supplies, and how many of the men detained were still in Israeli custody.
The IDF did not provide responses, but instead pointed to a statement issued after the hospital siege.
It described the attack as a "precise operation" designed to "thwart terrorist activity and apprehend terrorists".
Some of the weapons the IDF said were found in Kamal Adwan hospital. (Supplied: IDF)
The IDF said it gave civilians an opportunity to leave the Kamal Adwan compound before it stormed the hospital, and said it had negotiated with the hospital to provide fuel for a generator to keep the hospital operational.
"A number of terrorists — including Hamas terrorists who took part in the October 7th Massacre — had barricaded themselves inside the hospital," the statement said.
"The soldiers apprehended approximately 100 terrorists from the compound, including terrorists who attempted to escape during the evacuation of civilians.
"Inside the hospital, they found weapons, terror funds, and intelligence documents and in the surrounding area."
The IDF said an ambulance driver had confessed during interrogation that Hamas had been using the hospital as a safe haven.
All male members of the medical centre's staff, at least 44 of the 70-strong team, were detained by the army, and only 14 — including the hospital director — were later released, according to local authorities.
Among those taken was the last surgeon at the hospital, Dr Mohammed Obeid.
Dr Abu Safiya has told the ABC some patients will die due to the lack of surgery.
Last month, a United Nations inquiry said it found that Israel carried out a concerted policy of destroying Gaza's healthcare system, suggesting its actions amounted to war crimes.
Concerns have also been raised about Israel's treatment of Palestinian prisoners, and whether confessions have been coerced.
Rifles and magazines the IDF said were found inside the hospital. (Supplied: IDF)
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