DayofPal– Reports of horrific abuse have emerged from the Kamal Adwan hospital raid last month, where dozens of Palestinian women detailed sexual assaults by Israeli forces.
Among them is Maryam Al-Muqayad, a 13-year-old girl who recalls being ordered to remove her clothes by male Israeli soldiers before being dragged by her hair and forced to kneel. After the assault, she was expelled from her home in northern Gaza and sent south, an experience she tragically shares with many others.
Muqayad was at the hospital accompanying her sick grandmother. “The Israeli army set fire to several sections while shelling was everywhere around us,” she told Middle East Eye.
“The attacks continued for more than three-and-a-half hours before they started calling on everyone inside the hospital to stand in its yard,” she said.
Witness accounts describe how the raid unfolded following months of blockade, which had already cut off food, medicine, and aid to the besieged hospital. The assault, which saw Israeli forces bomb and burn parts of the facility, left patients, medical staff, and displaced individuals caught in its violent grip.
Health officials confirmed that several patients and workers were killed, while roughly 350 survivors were expelled—half-dressed and humiliated—at gunpoint.
Eyewitnesses report that many women and girls were forced to undress, sexually harassed, and strip-searched during the raid. Those who resisted were beaten.
“We refused to remove our hijabs, so they started exerting more pressure, ordering girls under 20 to move south without their families, but the families refused. They then strip-searched many women and [sexually] harassed them,” Muqayad said.
Some women were dragged by their hair, stripped of their clothing, and insulted while being moved to interrogation centers. The ordeal extended even to the elderly, who were mocked and forced to undress without justification.
“One elderly woman with us was wearing a two-piece prayer dress, consisting of a hijab and a skirt. The soldiers, at gunpoint, forced her to remove both without any apparent reason. After she had undressed, they mockingly told her to put her clothes back on.”
Maryam Al-Muqayad also said an Israeli soldier hit a pregnant nurse in the belly with his weapon butt. They searched them and separated children from their parents, then made them walk behind tanks emitting black smoke.
“They told us they would film us to show [the world] that Hamas was using us as human shields. When we arrived, they dragged us by our hair across the schoolyard, forced us into toilets, and ordered us to undress,” Muqayad revealed.
According to Muqayad, the soldiers not only humiliated and assaulted the women but also used displaced gazans thete as human shields. A young man was reportedly forced to enter homes ahead of advancing soldiers to check for booby traps.
30-year-old Alaa was with Muqayad when Israeli soldiers forced women to strip. However, she considers herself lucky to have been only pulled by the hair over her hijab – she was spared the strip searches.
When tanks broke in and soldiers entered, they asked the women to remove their clothes, she added.
“None of us complied, so they took us to Al-Farid Hall, where they ordered us to remove our hijabs, but we also refused. Male soldiers then came and began pulling my hair over my hijab, doing the same to the other women.”
This violent incursion is part of a broader offensive in northern Gaza that began in early October 2023. The attack has displaced nearly one million residents from Gaza City and the northern Strip, with two million Palestinians now displaced across the region.
Since the war started, Israeli forces have killed over 46,500 Palestinians and injured nearly 110,000, with the true death toll likely far higher, according to the Palestinian health ministry. The events at Kamal Adwan hospital reflect the catastrophic human toll of this ongoing war.
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