Nov. 21 (UPI) — Indonesia’s foreign minister condemned on Tuesday an attack on a hospital in the Gaza Strip as a “violation of international humanitarian law” and called on other nations to step up pressure on Israel.
12 people were killed and dozens more wounded in an attack on the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip Monday morning, as another medical facility in the area has come under military attack. The Gazan Health Ministry has blamed Israel for the incident.
Fighting has escalated around the hospital, the second one in Gaza to endure fighting as the conflict between Israel and Hamas grinds on. Al-Sharif, the largest hospital in Gaza, has been at the center of recent fighting, and the Israel Defense Forces has said Hamas has established a makeshift war operations command center in the basement, a charge Hamas has repeatedly denied.
Israel has repeatedly infiltrated the hospital in an effort to locate and free more than 230 hostages.
The Indonesian Hospital sustained military strikes around 2:30 a.m. after Israeli tanks entered the hospital compound in the midst of constant shelling and gunfire, a nurse and a hospital administrator told the New York Times.
The artillery strike reportedly hit the second floor of the Indonesian Hospital where, the nurse and administrator said, dozens of patients were sleeping, and they reported staff workers were unable to move dead bodies because weapon and tank fire continued outside.
“There was chaos, darkness and fire in the department, which made it very difficult to evacuate the dead and wounded,” said Mohamad, the nurse, who asked only his first name be used to avoid potential retribution.
Video shot by Palestinian journalists appeared to show destruction in a ward of the hospital Monday, with bodies and wreckage strewn and bodies sprawled on the floor, debris hanging from the ceiling.
Officials reported there were at least 500 patients and thousand of people seeking shelter were in the hospital when the attack happened. “It’s possible that what happened at Al-Shifa Hospital will also happen to us,” the hospital administrator added.
The Israeli military said that its forces had come under fire overnight “from within the Indonesian Hospital,” and that it “directly targeted the specific source of enemy fire” in response. “No shells were fired toward the hospital,” the military said in a statement.
Israel invaded Gaza more than three weeks ago in response to Hamas’s surprise attacks on Israel October 7th which killed 1,400 people. Since then, Israel has steadily gained a foothold and is tightening its grip in northern Gaza by surrounding several hospitals in the region.
Mohamad said after the strike and just before Dawn, he and dozens of people were about to escape the hospital “amid shelling and gunfire,” he said.
The Gazan health ministry reported 500 injured people had been transferred from the hospital to Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, but it was not clear when.
The administrator said there are hundreds of patients still in the Indonesian Hospital, some on ventilators and in critical condition.
“Evacuating them would be very complicated” without help from humanitarian organizations and coordination with the Israeli military, he said.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, said in a social media post that the organization was “appalled” at reports of the attack, adding: “Health workers and civilians should never have to be exposed to such horror, and especially while inside a hospital.”
