Israeli soldiers stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last remaining medical facility in the northern Gaza Strip, burning large sections and ordering hundreds of people to leave.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Friday that communication had been lost with the medical staff inside the hospital in Beit Lahia, which has been under siege and intense pressure from Israeli forces for weeks. She added that she had no information about the fate of the patients who were inside.

The Ministry’s director, Munir Al-Bursh, said in a statement, “The occupation forces are now inside the hospital and are burning it.”

The Israeli army issued a statement confirming that it had launched a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital, claiming without evidence that the medical facility “operates as a terrorist stronghold for Hamas in northern Gaza.”

Throughout their assault on Gaza, Israeli forces have routinely besieged and attacked medical facilities – housing patients and displaced families – under similar pretexts.

Fire breaks out

Yousef Abu Al-Rish, Deputy Minister of Health in Gaza, said that Israeli forces set fire to the hospital’s surgery department, laboratory, and warehouse.

The fire then “spread to all buildings” in the medical complex, according to a separate statement issued by the Ministry of Health in the Strip.

She said that Kamal Adwan “is suffering from a stifling siege, as the operations and surgery departments, the laboratory, maintenance, ambulance units, and warehouses were completely burned.”

The ministry added that all electrical generators in the facility were destroyed.

It was also said: [Israeli] The occupation army forcibly transfers the sick and wounded under the threat of weapons and rifle barrels to the Indonesian hospital, which lacks medical supplies, water, medicines, and even electricity and generators.

As with the Indonesian Hospital and Al Awda Hospital, Kamal Adwan has been subjected to repeated attacks by Israeli forces, especially after they launched a renewed ground offensive in the area more than two months ago. The north, where famine looms, has been under a complete blockade and isolated from the rest of the Strip ever since.

Al-Barash said that the Israeli army ordered 350 people to leave Kamal Adwan to a nearby school housing displaced families. This included 75 patients, their companions, and 185 medical staff.

Footage circulated on local media showed smoke rising from the Kamal Adwan Hospital area.

Much of the area surrounding the northern cities of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia has been depopulated and systematically bulldozed, raising speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone.

‘A devastating blow’

Al Jazeera’s Tariq Abu Azoum, from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, said there was a dearth of information coming out of Kamal Adwan on Friday, but witnesses who were at the facility said they faced searches from Israeli soldiers.

Eyewitnesses also confirmed that the Israeli army carried out field executions in [the hospital’s] Abu Azoum said that the fate of the hospital director is unknown.

Our correspondent said Kamal Adwan was witnessing a “gradual escalation” and “deliberate attacks” by the Israeli army, adding that the forced evictions and fires had dealt a “devastating blow to the already fragile health care system in northern Gaza.”

On Thursday, health officials said five medical staff members, including a pediatrician, were killed by Israeli fire in Kamal Adwan.

In a statement, Hamas held Israel and the United States responsible for the fate of the hospital’s occupants.

“the [Israeli] She said via the Telegram application: “The occupation government is committing its crimes in Gaza, relying on American cover and some Western capitals that are partners in the ongoing genocide.”

United Nations World Health Organization spokeswoman Margaret Harris expressed concern about the situation.

“We are witnessing the targeting of civilians and the health system in Gaza,” Harris told Al Jazeera. “What Gaza’s hospitals are exposed to is horrific, and what we are witnessing represents a punishment for the population.”

Elsewhere in Gaza, medics and the civil emergency service said Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people, including 15 people in one house in Gaza City.

Also on Friday, 14 countries joined or indicated their intention to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Organizations, including the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have also found that Israeli actions in Gaza are consistent with the crime of genocide.

The Israeli attack has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians since October last year, according to health officials in the Strip. Most of the 2.3 million people were displaced, and much of Gaza was reduced to rubble.