Geneva — The head of the United Nations World Health Organization called Monday for the immediate release of Hossam Abu Safiyeh, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the war-torn Gaza Strip, who is currently in prison. detained by Israeli army following major raid on the establishment. Friday and Saturday’s assault on Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahia left northern Gaza’s last major health facility out of service and empty of patients, the WHO said.
“Hospitals in Gaza have once again become battlefields and the the health system is seriously threatened“, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. said the. “Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is out of service following the raid, the forced evacuation of patients and staff and the detention of its director. We don’t know where he is. We demand his immediate release.
The Israeli military said Sunday that its forces killed around 20 Palestinian militants and apprehended “240 terrorists” in the raid, calling it one of its “largest operations” in the territory. The Israeli military said it had arrested Abu Safiyeh on suspicion of being a Hamas militant. When asked if he had been transferred to Israeli territory for further questioning, the army had no immediate comment.
Israeli officials have consistently accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields, placing its weapons and fighters in and under hospitals, schools and other vital infrastructure. The group, long designated a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States, has denied the accusations.
Tedros said patients in critical condition at Kamal Adwan had been transferred to the Indonesian hospital, also in northern Gaza, “which itself is out of service.”
“Amid the current chaos in northern Gaza, WHO and partners today delivered basic medical and hygiene supplies, food and water to the Indonesian hospital and transferred 10 critical patients at Al-Shifa Hospital,” he said. “We urge Israel to ensure that its health care needs and rights are respected. »
He said seven patients as well as 15 caregivers and health workers remained at the “severely damaged” Indonesian hospital, “which does not have the capacity to provide care.”
“Al-Ahli Hospital and Al-Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital in Gaza City were also attacked today and both were damaged,” Tedros added. “We repeat: stop the attacks on hospitals. Gazans need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health assistance.
The London-based charity Amnesty International also called on Israel to immediately and unconditionally release Abu Safiyeh, saying in a series of social media posts that the hospital director had become the “voice of Gaza’s decimated health sector.”
Charity accused The Israeli military has accused the Israeli army of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza – an accusation that Israel has repeated and vehemently rejected – and accused the Israeli army of detaining “hundreds of Palestinian medical professionals” without charge and subjecting them to “torture and other ill-treatment”.
Since October 6 this year, Israeli operations in Gaza have focused on the north, with officials saying their ground and air offensive aims to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
Health officials in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory said Monday that the total death toll in Gaza from the Israeli offensive stood at 45,541, including 27 people, according to the Health Ministry, who had been killed in just the previous 24 hours.
The ministry said at least 108,338 other people had been injured since Israel launched its offensive against Hamas. The war was launched in response to the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, which saw the militants kill some 1,200 people in Israel and kidnap 251 others.
Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut/Anadolu/Getty
Freezing winter temperatures have deepened the misery of Palestinians in Gaza after more than a year of war. Doctors in the enclave have reported infants dying from hypothermia in recent weeks.
Dr. Fidda Al-Nadi, a doctor at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, which has not been fully functioning since Israeli raids earlier this year, told CBS News last week that he admits one or two cases of hypothermia each year. day, and that the youngest patients were the most vulnerable.
“In the stress we live under, many children are born prematurely, which further predisposes them to hypothermia,” Al-Nadi said.