On December 27th, 2024, a number of medical personnel were killed and a large number of medical personnel were injured in Kamal Adwan Hospital after it was allegedly set on fire by the Israeli military. As many as 240 other patients and medical staff, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, were arrested before the hospital was completely destroyed.

According to Al Jazeera on December 27th, “a number of medical personnel were burned to death in the fire set by the [Israeli] forces in Kamal Adwan Hospital.” Safa News provided similar information about the incident at 21:55.

X/Twitter  user Abu_Saleh9 posted a video showing the destroyed hospital surrounded by tanks as a line of people, many with their hands held above their heads and some with visible injuries and limps, are being marched around. A Facebook post by Youssef Rabhi mentioned that medical personnel and patients were forced to leave after being stripped of their clothes, and were then interrogated and “set on fire in several sections of the hospital”.

According to Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, the Ministry of Health lost contact with hospital staff after their forced evacuation from the hospital.

@Dr_Muneer1 on X/Twitter shared a screenshot of Dr. Hussam’s Instagram story, which said, “Now the [Israeli] army is burning all the operating departments in the hospital while we are still there. The army evacuated the entire medical staff and displaced people and arrested a number of the medical staff. There are a large number of injuries among the medical staff.”

@tamerqdh on X/Twitter posted a photo of Dr. Hussam, Kamal Adwan Hospital’s director, showing a man with his back turned to the camera as he walks through an alley of destruction and rubble. The photo caption stated that this was “The last photo of Dr. Hussam Abu Safia…before he was kidnapped along with 240 patients and medical staff, and the hospital was burned to the ground. No one knows his fate after that photo or his current condition.”.

Where sources identified the belligerent, all sources attributed the strike to the Israeli military.