In yet another crime added to the systematic targeting of healthcare facilities, the Israeli occupation army shelled Al-Helou Hospital in Al-Nasr neighbourhood, west of Gaza City, with two projectiles, rendering access to or from the facility nearly impossible.
Doctors and patients inside the hospital are reported to be in a state of extreme fear after the Israeli occupation forces cut off internet access, effectively isolating the hospital from the outside world and crippling its medical services.
Eyewitnesses confirmed that Israeli occupation forces have been deployed around the hospital as part of a wider ground incursion across several key areas in Gaza City. Simultaneously, residential buildings are being bombed and destroyed in a deliberate campaign to forcibly displace civilians and depopulate the city.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health and human rights data, since the start of the war in October 2023, Israeli occupation forces have carried out a widespread campaign of attacks against the health sector. This includes the destruction or shutdown of 38 hospitals, the targeting of 96 primary care centres, damage to 197 ambulances, and 788 direct attacks on medical facilities, staff, and supply chains, resulting in the deaths of 1,670 healthcare workers in the line of duty.
Such acts represent a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which explicitly prohibits targeting medical facilities and personnel under any circumstances. These actions also constitute war crimes and potentially amount to genocide under Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.
The repeated targeting of hospitals, combined with the bombing of civilian populations and the imposition of a total blockade that has led to famine and the death of hundreds of Palestinians, reveals a deliberate strategy aimed at destroying Palestinian life, health, and dignity. This policy is consistent with internationally recognised definitions of forced displacement and mass killing as tools of genocide.
