Israel said on Saturday it had arrested the director of a hospital in the northern Gaza Strip presented as a command center for Palestinian Hamas and now emptied of its patients and staff, according to the World Health Organization which said is said to be “dismayed”.
Kamal Adwan Hospital was the last major hospital still operational in the north of the Palestinian territory, devastated by more than a year of war between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas.
It is now “empty” and “out of service”, declared the World Health Organization (WHO), following a major offensive by the Israeli army.
The latter indicated late Saturday afternoon that it had completed “a targeted operation”, launched the day before, against Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters who it believed were acting in and around the establishment.
She also confirmed having arrested for questioning the director of the hospital, Dr Hossam Abou Safiya, “suspected of being a Hamas terrorist”, among more than 240 arrests in total.
“This is the number of terrorists we expected,” army spokesman Nadav Shoshani said. “However, we did not expect to find thousands of weapons.”
– “Undressed” –
Since October 6, the Israeli army has intensified its land and air offensive in the north of the Gaza Strip to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping.
It regularly accuses the latter of using hospitals as a base to prepare and launch attacks against its troops, which the Islamist movement denies.
Mohammad, a witness who preferred not to give his last name, told AFP that the army had “asked all the young men to undress before leaving the hospital and going to a school used as a detention and interrogation center.
“Once the interrogation was over, they (the soldiers) put us in a truck and took off our clothes. We stayed in the truck from two to six in the morning before being released,” he testified. AFP a hospital patient, Ramadan Al-Aswad.
The WHO, “dismayed” by the Israeli raid, also relayed accusations that “several people were stripped naked and forced to walk towards southern Gaza”.
According to the Hamas government's Health Ministry, soldiers arrested dozens of medical staff at Kamal Adwan Hospital in addition to its director.
“The (Israeli) occupation has completely destroyed the medical, humanitarian and relief infrastructure in northern Gaza,” local Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal told AFP.
– 48 dead in Gaza in 24 hours –
Located in Beit Lahia, Kamal Adwan Hospital played a crucial role in a besieged Gaza Strip and with health services exhausted after more than a year of war.
“The situation is catastrophic, there are no more medical services, ambulances and rescuers in the north” of Gaza, a witness, Ammar al-Barch, 50, told AFP.
Civil Defense also reported nine deaths in an Israeli strike Saturday morning on a house in the center of the Palestinian territory.
Israel, for its part, announced that it had intercepted “two projectiles” fired from northern Gaza above its territory. Sirens were activated in the Jerusalem, Negev and Shephelah areas.
Military operations are expected to continue as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 75, is scheduled to undergo prostate surgery on Sunday, his office said on Saturday.
In response to the Hamas attack carried out from Gaza on October 7, 2023, the Israeli army launched an aerial bombardment campaign followed by a ground offensive against the Palestinian territory.
According to the latest report from the Hamas government's Ministry of Health, 45,484 Palestinians, mainly civilians, died in total, including at least 48 in the space of 24 hours.
On the Israeli side, the Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures.
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