The director of one of many final functioning hospitals in northern Gaza was arrested in a raid the Israeli navy stated was focusing on a Hamas command centre.
The Hamas-run Palestinian well being ministry stated Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was held by Israeli forces on Friday together with dozens of different employees and brought to an interrogation centre.
Israel’s navy stated it “conducted and completed a targeted operation” because the hospital was getting used as a command centre for Hamas navy operations.
Picture:
Dr Hussam Abu Safiya. File pic
An Israel Protection Forces (IDF) assertion stated greater than 240 terrorists had been detained, a few of whom tried to pose as sufferers or flee utilizing ambulances.
Amongst these taken for questioning are the hospital’s director, who it stated was suspected of being a “Hamas terrorist operative”.
Round 15 folks concerned in final 12 months’s 7 October assault on southern Israel, wherein round 1,200 folks had been killed and 250 others kidnapped, had been additionally detained, the IDF stated.
The Israeli navy stated a whole bunch of sufferers and employees had been evacuated to a different hospital earlier than and in the course of the operation, and it had offered gas and medical provides to each hospitals.
Militants fired on its forces and so they had been “eliminated”, whereas weapons, together with grenades, weapons, munitions, and navy gear, had been additionally seized within the raid, it stated.
‘It was humiliation’, says injured affected person
Half-stripped males treading over rubble by means of a scene of full scale destruction with their arms raised and enormous tanks on both facet.
One of many injured sufferers made to take the stroll was being handled within the hospital along with his spouse and kids by his facet.
Within the hours after being launched he shared his expertise from the security of al Ahli hospital.
“The army came the night before and started firing rockets at the hospital and surrounding buildings,” he says. He seems weak and his garments are gray with concrete mud.
“Yesterday between 5.30 and six, the army came to the hospital and called out [with a loudspeaker] that the director of the hospital must hand over all the displaced, the sick and wounded.”
The director of Kamal Adwan hospital Dr Hussam Abu Safiya had been sharing movies on-line sounding the alarm on intensified Israeli assaults on the hospital in a 10-day siege earlier than the total raid. He has been detained within the raid.
“We all started leaving then the army stopped us and told the director, ‘I want them in their underwear without any clothes on and they should leave without clothes on’,” says the affected person.
“So, we went out without clothes and walked a long distance to a checkpoint. They made us sit there still without any clothes all day in the freezing cold. Once we entered the checkpoint – it was humiliation, cursing and insults in an unnatural way.”
“When they finished the search they placed a number on the back of our necks and on our chest. After we were done with the search they loaded us on to trucks – still naked without any clothes on.”
He says they waited within the vehicles for 4 hours earlier than they had been launched and that the injured, sick, the medical employees and guests all confronted the identical humiliating therapy.
The Israel-Hamas battle has killed greater than 45,400 Palestinians, over half of them girls and kids, and wounded greater than 108,000 others, in line with the well being ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The hospital has been hit a number of instances over the previous three months by Israeli troops waging an offensive in largely remoted northern Gaza in opposition to Hamas fighters it says have regrouped.
The well being ministry stated a strike on the hospital earlier this week killed 5 medical personnel.
The World Well being Group (WHO) stated it was “appalled” by Friday’s raid, which it stated put northern Gaza’s final main well being facility “out of service”.
“The systematic dismantling of the health system and a siege for over 80 days… puts the lives of the 75,000 Palestinians remaining in the area at risk,” a press release stated.
The Israeli navy stated in a press release: “The IDF will continue to act in accordance with international law regarding medical facilities, including those where Hamas has chosen to embed its military infrastructure and conduct terrorist activities in blatant violation of international law.”
