The sound of tanks rumbling by the streets outdoors of Kamal Adwan Hospital woke everybody up, they had been already on edge after enduring months of direct Israeli assaults.
Then got here the loudspeakers ordering everybody to evacuate – the sick, the wounded, medical workers, and displaced folks in search of shelter – early on Friday morning.
It was clear that the medical complicated in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya was about to face an Israeli raid, like so many had earlier than it as Israel appeared to systematically destroy all healthcare in Gaza.
It didn’t matter that, in accordance with the World Well being Group, the hospital was the final main well being facility operational in northern Gaza, an space that has been suffocatingly besieged and decimated by Israel in its ongoing battle.
Nor that it was a refuge for lots of of Palestinians whose properties had been destroyed by Israel and had nowhere else to go.
Numbers written on their chests
At about 6am, affected person Izzat al-Aswad heard Israeli forces summoning Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the hospital director, over their loudspeakers.
Dr Abu Safia got here again and advised folks within the hospital that they had been ordered to evacuate. Abu Safia himself, who was a uncommon voice exposing what Israel was doing to the hospital, was taken by Israel, which has refused to launch him regardless of calls to take action from the UN, humanitarian NGOs and worldwide well being organisations.
A little bit later, al-Aswad stated Israeli troopers demanded that each one the lads strip right down to their underwear to be allowed to depart.
Shivering, frightened, a lot of them injured, the lads had been ordered to stroll to a checkpoint the Israelis had arrange about two hours away, al-Aswad recounted by cellphone.
On the checkpoint, they gave their full names and had their images taken.
Then a quantity was scrawled on their chest and neck by a soldier, indicating that they had been searched.
Among the males had been taken for interrogation.
“They beat me and the lads round me,” al-Aswad stated. “They hit the injured folks like me instantly on our accidents.”
Shorouq al-Rantisi, 30, a nurse in Kamal Adwan’s laboratory division, was among the many ladies taken from the hospital.
The ladies had been advised to stroll to the identical checkpoint, which was in a faculty, after which waited for hours within the chilly.
“We might hear the lads being crushed and tortured. It was insufferable.”
Then the searches began.
“The troopers had been dragging the ladies by the pinnacle in the direction of the search space,” al-Rantisi stated. “[They] shouted at us, demanding we take away our headscarves. Those that refused had been crushed badly.”
“The primary woman known as for looking out was advised to strip. When she refused, a soldier beat her and compelled her to raise her garments.
“A soldier dragged me by the pinnacle after which one other soldier ordered me to raise the highest of my garments, then the underside, and checked my ID,” she stated.
Deserted sufferers
Al-Rantisi stated the ladies had been finally taken, left at a roundabout, and advised they might not return to Beit Lahiya.
“How might we depart and abandon the sufferers? None of us ever considered leaving till we had been pressured to,” she stated on the cellphone.
Israel assaulted the hospital for a lot of weeks earlier than the raid.
“The hospital and its courtyard had been bombed relentlessly, day and evening, as if it was regular,” al-Aswad stated.
“Quadcopters fired at anybody shifting within the courtyard … they focused mills and water tanks, whereas medical workers had been struggling to look after sufferers.”
The evening earlier than the raid was “terrifying”, al-Aswad added, with Israeli assaults throughout, together with on the “al-Safeer” constructing.
“Witnesses say about 50 folks had been in there, together with nurses from the hospital. Nobody might rescue them or retrieve their our bodies, they’re nonetheless there,” he recounted.
Al-Aswad and the lads who weren’t taken for interrogation had been launched after a full day of abuse and humiliation.
“The troopers ordered us to go west of Gaza Metropolis and by no means come again,” he stated. “We walked by destruction and rubble, freezing, till folks got here to fulfill us close to Gaza Metropolis, providing assist and blankets.”
‘Betrayed’ and ‘deserted’
Israel’s raid merely compounded “the worldwide silence and abandonment” Palestinians in Gaza have been confronted with all through greater than a yr of relentless Israeli assaults that killed greater than 45,000 folks, al-Rantisi stated.
“Over 60 days of relentless shelling – quadcopters, artillery, and focused strikes on mills,” she stated.
“Dr Hussam’s pleas went unanswered till the hospital was stormed and emptied. How does the world permit this to occur?”
“I really feel we had been all betrayed,” Fadi al-Atawneh, 32, stated bitterly on the cellphone.
“I used to be wounded, so I stayed within the hospital, hoping that the World Well being Group would evacuate or defend us, however it by no means occurred,” al-Atawneh stated.
“I’m deeply saddened by what occurred to us and the destiny of Dr Abu Safia. We’re left alone within the face of this aggression.”
