Star Metro - Israeli military says Gaza hospital chief held in raid

The military said the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hossam Abu Safiyeh, is being held for questioning, on suspicion of "being a Hamas terrorist operative", and that the raid is now over.

Gaza health officials and the WHO earlier Saturday said the raid forced the hospital in Beit Lahia out of service and led to Abu Safiyeh's detention.

Also Saturday, the military said it intercepted two projectiles fired at Israel from northern Gaza, a rare attack more than 14 months into Israel's war with the Palestinian militants, whose top leaders have been killed.

Since October 6, Israeli operations in Gaza have focused on the north, where they say their land and air offensive aims to prevent Hamas from regrouping.

"The situation is catastrophic," said Ammar al-Barsh, 50, a resident of Jabalia, near Beit Lahia. "There is no medical service, no ambulances and no civil defence in the north."

Israel's military says it has killed hundreds of militants since October 6, while rescuers in the area say thousands of civilians have died.

"Kamal Adwan is now empty," the WHO said, adding that it was "appalled" by the raid which followed escalating restrictions and repeated attacks.

It was also the latest raid against a hospital during the war.

"The systematic dismantling of the health system and a siege for over 80 days on north Gaza puts the lives of the 75,000 Palestinians remaining in the area at risk," the UN health agency said in a statement.

Israel's military said it had "completed a targeted operation against a Hamas command centre in the Kamal Adwan Hospital", leading to the detention of "over 240 terrorists in the area".

- Told to strip -

Apart from detaining Abu Safiyeh, who is being questioned in Gaza, the military said it is holding "Hamas engineering and anti-tank missile operatives and approximately 15 terrorists who infiltrated Israel during the October 7th massacre" in 2023.

WHO said the remaining 15 critical patients, 50 caregivers and 20 health workers were transferred on Friday to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, which it described as "destroyed and non-functional".

It said WHO would undertake an urgent mission to the Indonesian Hospital on Sunday, partly to move the critical patients to Gaza City.

WHO said initial reports indicated that some areas of the Kamal Adwan hospital were burnt and severely damaged during the raid.

Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry earlier reported that several medical staff had been detained along with Abu Safiyeh.

One of the Gazans evacuated, who asked to be identified only as Mohammad for security reasons, told AFP some evacuees were told to strip.

"As we began to exit, the army asked all young men to take off their clothes and walk outside the hospital," said Mohammad, whose brother was a patient there.

- 'Command and control centre' -

Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said this practice "is not a form of humiliation" but so troops can ensure "no one is booby-trapped or is carrying explosives or gun on them".

Mohammad said: "They took tens of young men, as well as physicians and patients, to an unknown place... The young men were interrogated. They were asked about resistance fighters, Hamas and weapons."

Last Monday, Abu Safiyeh had accused Israel of targeting the hospital "with the intent to kill and forcibly displace the people inside".

The military said it had identified Kamal Adwan as used by "terrorists... for military operations in Jabalia".

"This was a command and control centre that we understood was for many dozens of terrorists or a few hundreds," Shoshani said.

Troops conducted "precise activities" inside the hospital and located and confiscated weapons, a military statement said.

Before beginning the raid, the military said it helped to evacuate 350 patients, caregivers and medical staff.

In a statement, Hamas dismissed as "lies" Israeli allegations that its operatives were at the hospital.

Gaza's health ministry earlier quoted Abu Safiyeh as reporting "a large number of injuries among the medical team".

The military has regularly accused Hamas of using hospitals as command centres.

WHO said another north Gaza hospital, Al-Awda in Jabalia, is "barely able to function, and severely damaged due to recent air strikes".

Israel's former defence minister Moshe Yaalon last month used Beit Lahia as an example when he accused the army of "ethnic cleansing" in Gaza, comments dismissed as "dishonest" by the Likud party to which he once belonged.

A separate Israeli strike in central Gaza killed at least nine Palestinians on Saturday, Gaza's civil defence said.

The Gaza war was triggered by the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which resulted in 1,208 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 45,484 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the UN considers reliable.

V.Watson--SMC