Concerns are growing for the safety of a prominent Gaza hospital director who was taken into Israeli custody after the Israel Defense Forces raided the site, detained dozens of people and forced the closure of one of the last medical facilities. in operation in the north of the enclave.
Video captured outside Kamal Adwan Hospital and verified by NBC News shows its director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, dressed in a white medical coat and walking alone toward a military vehicle. The street is covered in rubble and the buildings around it appear destroyed, as the video widely shared on social networks shows.
While it is unclear exactly when the video was recorded, the Israeli military confirmed Monday I had He detained and interrogated Abu Safiya. He was detained as a “suspect” and being questioned about his “possible involvement in terrorist activities,” IDF spokesman Nadav Shoshani said in a post on X.
Before his arrest, Abu Safiya, a pediatrician, repeatedly warned about the IDF raid on the hospital and how it endangered patients, including premature babies.
On Friday he posted a video on his Instagram account showing a quadcopter dropping a bomb just meters from Kamal Adwan Hospital, and the bomb exploding with a loud bang before sending plumes of smoke into the air.
On Friday, video geolocated by NBC News in the area around the hospital showed a crowd of men stripped to the bare minimum of clothing walking in a line with their hands raised. Separately, the NBC News team in Gaza captured video of a fire that devastated several units of the hospital on the same day. In it, people could be seen running to try to put out the flames with buckets of water, while others searched through the rubble.
Shoshani previously said there was no connection between the fire and IDF activities there.
Since Friday there has been no sign of Abu Safiya, and international organizations, including the World Health Organization, have raised the alarm and demanded his release.
“Hospitals in Gaza have once again become battlefields and the health system is under grave threat,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement on X on Monday, adding that Kamal Adwan It was forced to stop operating after the IDF raid.
“We call for his immediate release,” Ghebreyesus said, although he noted that Abu Safiya’s “whereabouts are unknown.”
Hospitals and medical workers are considered protected by international law, which states that they should never become targets of war.
The IDF did not immediately respond to questions about Abu Safiya’s whereabouts, his condition or possible charges against him.
The IDF alleged that Kamal Adwan had been used as a “Hamas command center.” More than 240 people were arrested over the weekend, all of them “terrorists,” he added in a statement.
Sharing a photo of Abu Safiya over the weekend, international human rights group Amnesty International said it was “extremely concerned for the fate and well-being” of the medical director.
“He must be released immediately and unconditionally,” the organization said in a statement published on X.
Ghebreyesus said critical patients had been transferred from Kamal Adwan to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, which he noted “itself was out of operation.”
He said WHO field workers and partner groups were able to deliver basic medical and hygiene supplies as well as water to the Indonesian hospital on Monday, in addition to transferring 10 critical patients to Al-Shifa hospital, which has been heavily bombed and attacked. by Israeli forces repeatedly during the war in the Gaza Strip.
But Ghebreyesus said at least four patients were detained during the WHO’s efforts. “We urge Israel to ensure that their healthcare needs and rights are respected,” he said.
Meanwhile, the WHO director-general noted that many other hospitals in Gaza had also been attacked in recent days.
The IDF has repeatedly said that Hamas is blowing up hospitals and other civilian infrastructure and using them as military sites, and frequently attacked the facilities during the more than year-long offensive in the enclave.
Local health officials vehemently dispute claims that Hamas or other militants use the medical centers.
Repeated attacks by Israeli forces on hospitals and medical facilities in Gaza have left the enclave’s healthcare system decimated amid a growing humanitarian crisis, with most facilities damaged or destroyed in Israel’s longest-running military offensive. of one year.
“If a hospital has been reduced to a bombed shell, it would no longer be protected, but otherwise a hospital, whether it is used immediately or not, is presumed to be protected as an important civilian institution,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, previously told NBC News. “It can only be attacked if it is actively used for military purposes, and even then only if the civilian harm is not disproportionate.”
Illinois-based nonprofit MedGlobal was also among those that condemned the IDF attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital, calling it a “brutal violation of a protected medical space,” echoing calls for its release. by Abu Safiya.
“Dr. Abu Safiya and his team are the lifeline of healthcare delivery in northern Gaza,” Rajaa Musleh, director of MedGlobal in Gaza, said in a statement.
More than 45,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Israeli forces launched their offensive in the enclave following the Hamas-led terrorist attack on October 7, in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage. which marked a significant escalation in the situation. a conflict that lasts decades.
