GAZA – Six people were wounded Thursday when an Israeli drone struck the grounds of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, the Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed, targeting a facility inside territory the Israeli military itself designates as a “Green Zone” under direct Israeli control where displaced civilians were directed after successive evacuation orders emptied northern Gaza.
Three of the wounded were maintenance workers who were on the hospital grounds when the drone fired. The other three were civilians whose identities health officials had not confirmed by Thursday evening. None of the injuries were described as life-threatening, though medical workers in the area say any additional burden on Kamal Adwan’s already depleted staff is beyond what the facility can absorb.
The Palestinian Health Ministry described the strike as part of what it called the “systematic targeting of health facilities” it says Israel has conducted since launching its military campaign following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. Since then, more than 73,110 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to ministry figures the United Nations has described as likely an undercount given the collapse of documentation systems across the territory. Among those figures, 1,084 deaths have been recorded since a ceasefire took hold earlier this year.
Kamal Adwan occupies a particular position in Gaza’s shrunken medical landscape. It is among the last hospitals still functioning in the northern Strip, serving a population that has been displaced and redisplaced across Beit Lahiya and surrounding areas for more than two years. Its director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, has been held by Israeli authorities for more than 18 months without formal charges, a situation that international medical organizations and human rights groups have repeatedly demanded be resolved and that Israeli officials have declined to address in specific terms.
The “Green Zone” designation is central to what Palestinian health workers say Thursday’s strike reveals. The Israeli military created these zones as part of its management of the northern Gaza population, marking specific areas where civilians would theoretically have greater protection from military fire. Kamal Adwan sits within one such zone. The Palestinian Health Ministry said the strike shows the designation offers no actual protection in practice.
Al Jazeera reported Thursday that the strike hit the hospital’s grounds rather than its main building, though witnesses said the distinction carried little operational weight. Equipment sustained damage. A portion of the facility was briefly evacuated. The morning shift, already running at a fraction of its pre-war staffing level, was disrupted through much of the day.
The Israeli military offered no immediate comment on the incident.
The World Health Organization has documented more than 200 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza since October 2023, a figure WHO officials have described as exceeding anything in their records of documented modern conflicts. As Eastern Herald has reported on prior Israeli strikes against Gaza hospitals, Israeli authorities have consistently denied deliberately targeting medical infrastructure, attributing strikes to Hamas’s alleged use of hospital grounds for military purposes, a claim Palestinian health officials and independent reporting have repeatedly contested.
What the Thursday strike leaves unanswered is whether the three civilian casualties included patients admitted to the facility or people sheltering near it. Hospital administrators had not specified. Also unresolved is whether the attack will prompt any formal review of the “Green Zone” framework, which multiple international organizations have criticized as a mechanism backed by no enforcement or accountability structure.
Dr. Abu Safia’s detention is now approaching its 19th month. His absence has left Kamal Adwan without its senior medical director during a period when the hospital has faced drone strikes, evacuation orders, and the broader collapse of northern Gaza’s health infrastructure. Colleagues who have spoken publicly say they do not know whether he is being held in administrative detention or under formal criminal charges, because Israeli authorities have disclosed neither fact to his family, to the hospital’s remaining staff, or to international legal monitors who have formally requested the information.
The ceasefire that took hold earlier this year reduced the intensity of fighting in parts of Gaza but did not end it. The 1,084 deaths recorded since its beginning, as cited by Palestinian health authorities, represent a figure that multiple UN agencies and several international governments have raised in ongoing negotiations, without producing any binding response from Israeli authorities.
Thursday’s strike at Kamal Adwan adds to a record that Palestinian authorities say now spans every hospital the northern Strip once operated. Whether the “Green Zone” designation survives the scrutiny Thursday invites, or whether it will be revisited in any forum with the authority to impose consequences, remains an open question to which no Israeli official has yet responded.
