A wounded Palestinian arrives at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, after patients were evacuated  from the Kamal Adwan Hospital, on Friday —AFP

Agencies BEIT LAHIA (Gaza)

The World Health Organization says it is “appalled” by an Israeli raid which, it said, had shut down and partly destroyed the last major hospital still functioning in northern Gaza. Israel’s “systematic dismantling of the health system” combined with a siege of the population in the north of the coastal strip over the past 80 days “puts the lives of the 75,000 Palestinians remaining in the area at risk”, the WHO said.

It cited initial reports that some departments of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia “were burnt and severely damaged during the raid, including the laboratory, surgical unit, engineering and maintenance department, operations theatre, and the medical store”. Local sources in Beit Lahia said most of the medics and nurses detained in Friday’s raid had been released but the hospital’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya, was still unaccounted for.

“Kamal Adwan is now empty,” a WHO statement said. “On Friday evening, the remaining 15 critical patients, 50 caregivers and 20 health workers were transferred to an Indonesian hospital, which lacks the necessary equipment and supplies to provide adequate care. “The WHO is deeply concerned for their well being, as well as for the Kamal Adwan hospital director, who has been reportedly detained during the raid. The WHO has lost contact with him since the raid began.”

The Israel Defence Forces claimed the hospital was a “Hamas terrorist stronghold”, and that patients were moved for their own safety. In a joint statement with the Israel Security Agency, the IDF said: “The IDF and ISA completed a targeted operation against a Hamas Command Centre in the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabaliya.

During the operation in the area, over 240 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and other operatives suspected of terror activities were apprehended … the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, is suspected of being a Hamas terrorist operative.”

The WHO statement said that some of the staff and those patients who were in a stable condition were moved to an unnamed nearby location, while others had been forcibly transferred to the Indonesian hospital, so called because its construction was funded by Indonesia, The  hospital had been badly damaged by earlier bombing, had no power  or  water supply and was no longer functional, locals said.