DEIR AL BARA, Gaza Strip (AP) – Israeli forces have detained the head of a facility in the north. Gaza Palestinian health officials said Saturday they had closed the last functioning hospital after nighttime airstrikes elsewhere in the territory killed nine people, including children. The Israeli military says Hamas militants are using the facility and said more than 240 people had been detained.
The Gaza Ministry of Health announced that Dr. Hassam Abu Safiyah, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was arrested on Friday along with dozens of other staff and taken to an interrogation center. The ministry said Israeli forces stormed the hospital and forced many staff and patients out and ordered them to remove their clothes. in winter weatheraccording to the ministry.
The Israeli military confirmed on Saturday that it had detained the hospital director for interrogation and identified him as a suspected Hamas operative, although without providing evidence. They laid siege to the hospital and announced that special forces had entered and found weapons in the area. Insurgents opened fire on the troops and announced they had been “eliminated.” Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani later claimed to journalists that most of the detainees were Hamas operatives.
On Friday, the military denied breaking into hospital facilities or setting them on fire, but admitted it had ordered people to leave. The military reiterated the following claims: Hamas militants operate within Kamal AdwanHospital officials deny this.
hospital I’ve been attacked multiple times in the last 3 months The Israeli military is carrying out attacks in largely isolated northern Gaza, claiming Hamas fighters have regrouped. The Ministry of Health announced that five medical workers were killed in a hospital strike earlier this week.
MedGlobal, the humanitarian organization for which Abu Safiyah worked, said on Friday that it had grave concerns about him. The agency said the incident followed the arrest of five other staff in October and was an “alarming and egregious pattern of targeting medical personnel and spaces”.
Almost 15 months of Israeli shelling and ground attacks have devastated Gaza’s health sector. The World Health Organization said the attack on Kamal Adwan had left the last major medical facility in northern Gaza “unusable” due to increased access restrictions, adding: “This horror must end. , medical care must be protected,” he added.
The Ministry of Health stated the condition of patient Kamal Adwan, who was transferred to a nearby damaged Indonesian hospital. attacked in the past – “It was very difficult.”
An Israeli military statement on Saturday said 350 patients and medical workers had been evacuated from Kamal Adwan in recent weeks, and a further 95 patients, caregivers and medical workers were evacuated to Indonesian hospitals during the operation. Announced. It also said it provided fuel and medical supplies to both hospitals.
The war has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, and injured more than 108,000, according to the Ministry of Health. The number does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Since October, Israeli attacks have effectively sealed off the northern Gaza areas of Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Rahiya, and have largely leveled the area. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forcibly removed, but thousands are believed to remain in the area, where Kamal Adwan Hospital and two other hospitals are located.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after the militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and abducting around 250 others. About 100 Israelis are still held captive in Gaza, and about a third are believed to have died.
Israel continued its attacks across Gaza on Saturday. At least nine people, including women and children, were killed in an overnight strike in Maghazi, according to staff at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where they were taken, and an Associated Press reporter who witnessed the bodies.
Men cried as bodies wrapped in bloodied white plastic lay on the morgue floor.
The Ministry of Health announced on Saturday that 48 people had died in the fires in Israel in the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Israel announced that its forces had launched an operation in the northern city of Beit Hanun, citing intelligence that militants and Hamas infrastructure were located in the area.
Strikes continued in Israel as well. Air raid sirens sounded early Saturday, and the military said it had intercepted a missile fired by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
Israeli warplanes also bombed key infrastructure in Yemen on Thursday. The Houthis have also attacked ships in the Red Sea and say they will not stop until Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza.
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Mednick reported from Jerusalem.
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