Palestinians carry white bags containing the bodies of people killed in an overnight Israeli airstrike on the Maghazi refugee camp at al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Bala, central Gaza Strip, on Saturday. Abdel Kareem Hana/AP Hide caption
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Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip – Israeli forces have detained the director of one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza after a nighttime airstrike killed nine people, including a child, in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical officials say. announced on Saturday.
The Gaza Ministry of Health announced on Friday that the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hassam Abu Safiyah, along with dozens of other staff members, had been arrested by Israeli forces and taken to an interrogation center. The ministry said Israeli forces stormed the hospital and forced many staff and patients out, telling them to take off their clothes for the winter.
The Israeli military did not respond to questions about the director. On Friday, the hospital denied breaking into or arsoning hospital facilities, but acknowledged it had ordered people to leave and said it was carrying out operations against Hamas infrastructure and militants in the region.
The military has repeatedly claimed that Hamas militants operate within Kamal Adwan, but has provided no evidence. Hospital officials denied that.
The hospital has been attacked multiple times in the past three months by Israeli forces carrying out attacks against regrouped Hamas fighters in the largely isolated north of Gaza. 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 left the last major medical facility in northern Gaza “unusable” due to increased access restrictions, adding: “This horror must end and medical must be protected,” he added.
The Health Ministry said the situation for patient Kamal Adwan, who was transferred to a nearby damaged Indonesian hospital that had also been raided in the past, was “extremely dire.”
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.
