Canadian supported health clinic destroyed in Israeli bombing attack

News Release
| 15.01.09

For Immediate Release January 15, 2009

(Toronto/Gaza City) -- KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, a partnership of 11 Canadian churches and church organizations, learned today that a community health clinic in Gaza City that is co-funded by KAIROS and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) was destroyed January 10 in an Israeli aerial bombing attack.

An Israeli telephone warning was given to the building’s owners, notifying them that the clinic should be evacuated within 15 minutes, indicating this was clearly a planned attack. Shortly thereafter, a warning shot was fired, followed by a direct hit from missiles fired by an Israeli F-15 air-force jet. While there were no deaths or injuries resulting from the attack, the church-run clinic and all its valuable medical equipment were completely destroyed.

Over the past ten years, KAIROS and CIDA have together provided over a quarter million dollars to the Palestinian partner, the Near East Council of Churches, to run the Shij'ia Family Health Care Centre in Gaza City and provide other social services. The clinic served approximately 10,000 families in a very poor area of Gaza City. The clinic’s services included tests for malnutrition and anemia, pre and post-natal care, a baby clinic, a pharmacy and a mobile dental clinic.

KAIROS Executive Director, Mary Corkery, visited the clinic in 2004. Recalling the jam-packed waiting rooms and the visible poverty, she said “the clinic has been a vital service for mothers and children whose lives will be even more difficult now that the clinic is gone.“

“Only several weeks ago, we wrote a letter to Prime Minister Harper urging the Canadian government to intervene for an immediate ceasefire,” added Ms. Corkery. “KAIROS laments the suffering that is resulting from this kind of destruction.”

KAIROS has written to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon requesting that he ask the Israeli government why a health clinic was targeted, and to request financial compensation.

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