Indonesian medics have held a communal prayer event in Jakarta to call for a ceasefire and an end to the “genocide” in Gaza where the Indonesia Hospital, located in the north of the war-torn Palestinian enclave, has been forced to cease operations.
The event held in Jakarta and online included staff from Indonesia’s doctors’, midwives’, pharmacists’ and dentists’ associations, and was organised by the Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C) which helped fund the construction of the Indonesian Hospital in 2011.
t is “time to scream to the world, stop genocide”, the Indonesian Medical Association and MER-C said in a joint statement.
“Attacks on hospitals and healthcare workers constitute violations of international law,” they said in the statement.
“A total of 22 hospitals and 49 health centres were forced to stop operating in the Gaza Strip due to Israeli arrogance,” the two groups said, calling on Indonesia’s government to “engage in firm diplomacy on the international stage to pressure Israel to cease its aggression in Gaza”.
Three Indonesian volunteers, Fikri Rofiul Haq, Reza Aldilla Kurniawan and Farid Zanjabil Al Ayubi, are currently based at the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza’s Beit Lahia. The hospital’s director, Atef al-Kahlout, told Al Jazeera on Thursday that the medical facility was no longer able to “offer any more services … we cannot offer patients any beds”.
Severe Israeli attacks were reported in the vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital on Friday. Describing the bombing, journalist Hussam Shabbat said from the Indonesian Hospital: “We lived 15 minutes of hell.”
