Israeli attack on Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, Gaza Strip

In the early hours of Monday, the Israeli army attacked the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, as part of the three-week-old invasion of the Gaza Strip. According to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health and various staff members At the hospital, run by the Indonesian government, 12 people were killed and dozens more injured in the attack. The hospital had already been surrounded by Israeli tanks and damaged by bombing in recent days, and had recently been left without water or electricity.

According to hospital staff, at the time of the attack there were at least 200 employees inside the hospital, 600 injured and 4,000 people who had taken refuge in the building, considering it a place safer than their homes in the context of systematic Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip, which began after the violent attack on Israeli territory by the radical Islamic group Hamas on October 7. Several of the wounded treated at the Indonesian hospital had been transferred there from Shifa hospital in Gaza City, which in recent days had become a particularly dangerous place due to Israeli military operations there.

A nurse told New York Times that the second floor of Beit Lahia hospital, where there were dozens of patients and displaced people, was hit by artillery in the early morning. An entire unit was destroyed, making both the evacuation of the wounded and the movement of corpses very difficult.

A video broadcast Monday morning by Al Jazeera seems to show some clashes between Israeli tanks and Hamas militiamen near the hospital.

The Israeli military said its forces came under fire overnight “from inside the Indonesian hospital” and were “directly targeting the specific source of enemy fire.” Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi condemned the attack, calling it a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”

In recent days, a good part of the Israeli army’s military operations in the north of the Gaza Strip have taken place near hospitals, where Israel believes Hamas’s operational commands are located. Hospitals are also the gathering place for most of the population who have not fled to the south of the Gaza Strip, and at least at the start of the war they were considered a safe place to take refuge from Israeli bombings. But in recent days, hospitals have also become military targets, and parking lots and adjacent buildings have been hit. However, thousands of people continue to concentrate in these structures, due to a lack of alternatives.