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hospitals
Israel's Takeovers of Gaza Hospitals Amount to 'War Crimes,' Says Human Rights Watch
"The Israeli military's denial of water and electricity left sick and wounded people to die, while soldiers mistreated and forcibly displaced patients and health workers, and damaged and destroyed hospitals."
Mar 20, 2025
As the Israel Defense Forces continued a devastating assault on the Gaza Strip Thursday, a U.S.-based rights group said that the IDF "caused deaths and unnecessary suffering of Palestinian patients while occupying hospitals" there over the past 18 months, "amounting to war crimes."
"International humanitarian law provides that hospitals and their staff may not be deliberately attacked," states the new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report. "Parties to the conflict must at all times respect and protect hospitals and take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to patients, staff, and facilities during the hostilities."
Like previous publications exposing the IDF's systematic destruction of the Gaza health system, the HRW report lays out how Israeli forces who occupied hospitals neglected their legal obligations and instead "severely interfered with the treatment" of injured and sick Palestinians, including by denying doctors' pleas to bring in supplies and blocking access to facilities and ambulances, "leading to the deaths of wounded and chronically ill patients."
HRW interviewed patients and healthcare workers present for Israeli takeovers of al-Shifa medical complex in Gaza City, Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, and the Nasser facility in Khan Younis. According to witnesses, the IDF "denied electricity, water, food, and medicines to patients; shot civilians; mistreated health workers; and deliberately destroyed medical facilities and equipment. Unlawful forced evacuations put patients at grave risk and left desperately needed hospitals nonfunctional."
In the section on Israeli activities at al-Shifa in November 2023, HRW reported that "Ridana Zukhra, 25, said she left al-Shifa with her children, brother, and cousin when Israeli forces ordered people to evacuate. Despite holding white flags, a tank fired at the group, badly wounding her daughter, Ghazal, 5, whose leg had to be amputated."
The report also shares accounts from the hospital five months later:
Dr. Badr B., 28, who asked not to use his real name for his protection, said that electricity at the hospital was cut off at about 2:00 am on March 18. Israeli forces broadcast a message that no one could leave, he said, and they shot and wounded four healthcare workers near the entrance. A doctor told the BBC that two patients on life support died because of the electricity cut.
Israeli forces seized the complex with "military vehicles, snipers, quadcopters [drones], soldiers, everything," Dr. B. said. Israeli forces ordered the 72 healthcare workers left at the hospital to transfer about 180 patients from the third and fourth floors of the ICU in the specialized surgeries building to the ground floor and warned they would "start shooting at these floors" within two hours. Dr. B. said that they began "shooting as we were evacuating the last group, three [patients] on crutches and the rest in wheelchairs." Staff then transferred patients to the hospital's reception building.
HRW also detailed Israel's December 2023 assault on Kamal Adwan and the February 2024 raid at Nasser, "when 850 patients and up to 10,000 displaced people were sheltering there."
According to the publication:
Duaa D., who asked that her real name not be used for her protection, said her son Mohammed, 20, was a kidney patient in Nasser hospital at the time, where there was no fresh food, clean water, or medicine for Mohammed's hypertension. Her two younger children, sheltering in a tent in the hospital courtyard, went sleepless with fear. Mohammed said he could barely walk and had lost almost half his body weight due to vomiting and diarrhea, that the water was contaminated, and that he could not digest the canned food due to his chronic illnesses.
On February 13, Duaa saw Jamal Abu al-Ola, 25, who had been sheltering in the hospital, in a white hazmat suit with his hands bound. NBC and other media reported that Israeli forces had detained and beaten him and ordered him to warn the hospital to evacuate, threatening to kill him and others if he did not return. Duaa said al-Ola shared the warning and left the hospital, but soon after was carried back in and "shot, with a fountain of blood pouring." Witnesses told news media that Israeli forces shot and killed him near the hospital entrance.
Duaa told HRW that she saw a large number of bodies on the ground and recalled an "unbearable" smell. "We saw cats and dogs eating bodies," she said. "Once a dog brought a human hand and gave it to its puppies."
Bill Van Esveld, associate children's rights director at HRW, demanded accountability for Israeli troops' well-documented war crimes.
"Israeli forces repeatedly demonstrated deadly cruelty against Palestinian patients in hospitals that they seized," Van Esveld said. "The Israeli military's denial of water and electricity left sick and wounded people to die, while soldiers mistreated and forcibly displaced patients and health workers, and damaged and destroyed hospitals."
"The Israeli military's occupation of Gaza's hospitals has transformed sites for healing and recovery into centers of death and mistreatment," he added. "Those responsible for these horrific abuses, including senior officials, should be held to account."
The report was published just days after Israel fully abandoned a cease-fire that took effect in January. Gaza Ministry of Health spokesperson Khalil Al-Dakran toldAnadolu Agency on Thursday that "the bodies of 710 people were transferred to hospitals since Tuesday, in addition to over 900 others injured."
Al-Dakran said that 70% of the injured were women and children, and "many of the injured died due to the lack of urgent medical care amid an Israeli blockade on Gaza, which causes a severe shortage of essential equipment and medicine."
Since the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel, the IDF has slaughtered at least tens of thousands of Palestinians—leading to an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
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UN Report Condemns Israel's 'Appalling Destruction' of Gaza Hospitals
The recent raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza reflects a "pattern of attacks" on healthcare facilities across the enclave, said the United Nations.
Dec 31, 2024
As rights advocates and family members demanded that Israel release Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the destroyed Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, the United Nations human rights office said Israeli attacks on healthcare infrastructure across Gaza for over a year raise "serious concerns" about the country's compliance with international law.
The "appalling destruction" of Kamal Adwan Hospital and the surrounding area is hardly an anomaly, said the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in a new report, and instead reflects a "pattern of attacks" that started in November 2023 when Israel launched its first military operation against al-Shifa Medical Complex.
Months later, a second raid left al-Shifa in "complete ruin" by April 1, and officials reported that after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrew they found three mass graves containing 80 corpses, including some "with catheters and cannulas still attached, suggesting they had been patients."
"As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became a death trap," said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. "The protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times."
The OHCHR's report documents attacks on hospitals between October 12, 2023 and June 30, 2024, before Kamal Adwan was destroyed in recent days.
Over that period, the IDF launched at least 136 strikes on at least 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities—killing and injuring patients and medical staff as well as other civilians and "causing significant damage, if not complete destruction of civilian infrastructure."
More than 500 medical professionals were killed in Gaza during the period covered by the report, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The OHCHR noted that the U.S.-backed IDF has apparently used MK 83 munitions in at least one airstrike on a hospital—one that was waged on January 10 on al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. MK 83 munitions are 1,000-pound bombs that have wide-area effects and are manufactured in the U.S., which has supplied Israel with at least $12.5 billion in military aid since October 7, 2023, and sends more than $3 billion per year to the IDF.
At least 12 people were reportedly killed in the al-Aqsa attack, which the OHCHR said raised "serious concerns of an indiscriminate attack."
The report noted that Israel has frequently claimed that Gaza hospitals are used by Hamas, but said that "insufficient information has so far been made available to substantiate these allegations, which have remained vague and broad, and in some cases appear contradicted by publicly available information."
OHCHR emphasized that even in "exceptional circumstances when medical personnel, ambulances, and hospitals lose their special protection because they fulfill the strict criteria to be considered military objectives," militaries must still observe international humanitarian law when attacking medical infrastructure.
"Intentionally directing attacks against hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are treated, provided they are not military objectives; intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such, or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities, including the launching of an indiscriminate attack resulting in death or injury to civilians; and intentionally launching disproportionate attacks, are also war crimes," reads the report.
The report comes days after Israeli raids on Kamal Adwan Hospital left northern Gaza—where the IDF has been conducting a ground offensive for nearly three months—without any operating medical facilities. Israel has confirmed that Abu Safiya was detained for questioning, prompting outcry from medical professionals and rights groups across the globe.
Gaza Health Ministry Director General Muneer Alboursh said Tuesday that Abu Safiya is one of 450 medical personnel who have been detained by Israel and said the doctor is being held in Israel's Sde Teiman prison, where Israel is accused of torturing healthcare workers.
Türk demanded "independent, thorough, and transparent investigations" of all Israeli attacks on hospitals and medical workers, "and full accountability for all violations of international humanitarian and human rights law which have taken place."
"It must also be a priority for Israel, as the occupying power, to ensure and facilitate access to adequate healthcare for the Palestinian population," he said, "and for future recovery and reconstruction efforts to prioritize the restoration of the medical capacity which has been destroyed over the last 14 months of intense conflict."
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'We Are Being Attacked in Plain Sight': Israeli Forces Besiege Three Gaza Hospitals
"It is unacceptable for the world to remain silent and unable to protect the healthcare system," said Gaza's Ministry of Health.
Dec 24, 2024
Israeli forces have encircled and attacked three barely functioning hospitals in northern Gaza with growing intensity over the past week, endangering the lives of patients receiving treatment inside the facilities—including premature babies—and medical workers.
Dr. Husam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said in a video statement over the weekend that the Israeli military had surrounded the facility and that "bullets had penetrated the intensive care unit, the maternity department, and the specialized surgery department."
"The nursery, maternity, and all departments of the hospital are being targeted by the occupation forces with all types of weapons, including sniper fire, tank shells, and quadcopters," said Abu Safiya, who noted that the hospital was still treating more than 80 patients.
Al Jazeera reported late Monday that a video recorded by eyewitnesses "shows robots in the vicinity of the hospital leaving behind an explosive device."
"We were told by the person who filmed that video that there were at least four other robots in the vicinity of the hospital," the outlet added. "Another video shows everyone in one corridor of the hospital, in the middle of the building, away from the windows and balconies and the rooms that are looking over the streets where these explosive devices are planted."
Israeli authorities have ordered the evacuation of Kamal Adwan as well as Indonesian Hospital and al-Awda Hospital, but medical personnel and patients inside the facilities fear for their lives as there's nowhere safe to go.
Gaza's Ministry of Health said in a Telegram post that Israel's military has targeted Kamal Adwan in recent days with "explosives and tank fire."
"We hold the world accountable for what is happening to us and demand that they take responsibility for our suffering," the ministry said. "It is unacceptable for the world to remain silent and unable to protect the healthcare system. We are being attacked in plain sight, with the entire world watching, yet no one intervenes in the face of this barbarity."
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack, Israeli forces have waged what one United Nations expert described as an "unrelenting war" on Gaza's already-strained healthcare system, invading and destroying hospitals and other medical infrastructure while choking off necessary supplies.
An Oxfam report published Monday found that just 12 trucks were able to distribute aid in northern Gaza over the past two and a half months due to Israel's siege and incessant military attacks. Oxfam noted that between early October and mid-December, only 11 medical evacuation and assessment missions were approved for Kamal Adwan, and "one could not reach the hospital due to military activity and the rest all faced impediments along the way."
“The situation in Gaza is apocalyptic and people are trapped, unable to find any kind of safety," said Sally Abi-Khalil, Oxfam's Middle East and North Africa director. "The absolute desperation of having no food or shelter for your family in the biting cold of winter. It is abhorrent that despite international law being so publicly violated by Israel and starvation being used relentlessly as a weapon of war, world leaders continue to do nothing."
"Every day that passes without a cease-fire," Abi-Khalil added, "is a death sentence for hundreds more civilians."
Efforts to evacuate the three hospitals in northern Gaza have been hindered by ongoing Israeli military attacks as well as a lack of ambulances, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). The group said it lost contact with Kamal Adwan Hospital early Sunday "following a harrowing night of relentless shelling, gunfire, and explosive robots targeting nearby buildings."
"PCHR stresses the urgent need for immediate action to protect patients and medical personnel and to ensure the ongoing operation of the hospital in an area where thousands of residents and IDPs face bombardment, starvation, and deprivation of healthcare and humanitarian services," the organization said in a statement.
The group added that "Israel's ongoing military assault and atrocities and its disregard for calls to end the genocide in Gaza are emboldened by the perpetual impunity granted by the U.S. and some Western allies, alongside these nations' complicity in the serious violations committed against the Palestinian people through continuously arming Israel with weapons, ammunition, and political support."
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