ActionAid is outraged to learn that the Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, run by ActionAid’s partner Al-Awda, has yet again come under attack by the Israeli military and that staff and patients have been ordered to evacuate the facility. We are extremely concerned for the safety of everyone inside the hospital and demand their protection, as enshrined under international humanitarian law.
In a voicenote message, Dr Mohammad Salha, acting director of the hospital, told ActionAid there were 38 patients inside the hospital, including a new mother who recently gave birth. He said staff had refused to leave because they had no way of evacuating the sick and injured due to the lack of ambulances and because they refused to leave people in the north of Gaza without access to medical care.
Al-Awda is the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza after the Israeli military attacked and stormed the Kamal Adwan hospital recently, detaining staff and forcibly evacuating everyone inside.
These egregious acts amount to the systematic destruction of the healthcare system in the north of Gaza, which is being wiped out before our eyes.
Without Al-Awda Hospital, pregnant women needing maternity services and the sick and injured in the north of Gaza will have nowhere left to turn. We call for an immediate cessation of attacks on hospitals and healthcare workers in Gaza, and for the enforcement of international law to protect civilians in Gaza.
ENDS
For media requests, please email christal.james@actionaid.org or call 7046659743.
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.
