Israeli forces detained the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, after setting the health facility in northern Gaza on fire with doctors and patients inside, according to health officials.
Israeli troops stormed on Friday the hospital following nearly three months of a suffocating blockade and constant air strikes on its departments and their vicinity.
Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza stated that the bombing caused several departments to catch fire, killing and wounding Palestinian medical workers and patients.
He added that all remaining medical staff, patients, and their relatives were taken out of the hospital at gunpoint, forced to strip down to their underwear, and transferred to an unknown location.
At the time of the raid, there were 350 people in the hospital, including 180 medical workers and 75 wounded people, according to the Gaza-based Government Media Office.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said dozens of doctors were taken to detention centers for interrogation.
On Saturday, it was confirmed that Israeli troops had arrested Abu Safiya during the military raid.
Israeli forces violently beat him before his arrest, Bursh noted.
Over the past three months, Abu Safiya, a pediatrician, has published dozens of videos and sent out pleas to the international community to act against the Israeli attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital.
He repeatedly warned that the lives of patients and medical staff were in danger amid constant Israeli bombings and a siege preventing the entry of aid and food.
“Instead of receiving aid, we receive tanks… which are shelling the [hospital] building,” said Abu Safiya in a video two months ago.
In late October, Abu Safiya’s son died as a result of an earlier Israeli raid on the hospital, according to health officials.
A month later, he was wounded in an Israeli air strike on the hospital complex.
The assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital came a day after 50 Palestinians were killed in an air strike on a building on the hospital’s grounds.
At least five medical staff were killed in Thursday’s attack, along with their wives, parents, and children.
The raid has left northern Gaza without any functioning healthcare centers.
Since Israel intensified its blockade on northern Gaza in October, Kamal Adwan Hospital has been operating at minimal capacity, offering life-saving services to newborn infants in neonatal intensive care units and other patients in ICUs.
The Israeli offensive in northern Gaza launched on 5 October, followed the presentation of a controversial proposal named the “Generals’ Plan” to the Israeli government.
The plan calls for ethnically cleansing areas north of the Netzarim Corridor, which divides Gaza in two, so Israel could establish a “closed military zone”.
“The occupation is delivering the final blow to the remaining healthcare system in northern Gaza today,” the health ministry said on Friday following the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital.
“This aligns perfectly with the generals’ plan to eliminate the population in the northern Gaza Strip.”
Since 7 October 2023, the Israeli military has also been accused of deliberately destroying Gaza’s health system through constant attacks on hospitals, ambulances, and doctors.
Israeli forces previously raided the Strip’s two largest hospitals, the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and Naser Hospital in Khan Younis, destroying them in the process.
They have also killed more than 1,150 health workers and detained 300 since the war on Gaza began, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Shortlink for this post: https://daysofpalestine.ps/?p=59716
