The director of one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza was arrested in a raid the Israeli military said was targeting a Hamas command centre.
The Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry said Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was held by Israeli forces on Friday along with dozens of other staff and taken to an interrogation centre.
Sky News has spoken to patients who say they were forced outside and told to strip in winter weather after troops stormed the hospital.
Israel‘s military said it “conducted and completed a targeted operation” as the hospital was being used as a command centre for Hamas military operations.
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statement said more than 240 terrorists were detained, some of whom tried to pose as patients or flee using ambulances.
Among those taken for questioning are the hospital’s director, who it said was suspected of being a “Hamas terrorist operative”.
Around 15 people involved in last year’s 7 October attack on southern Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 250 others abducted, were also detained, the IDF said.
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The Israeli military said hundreds of patients and staff were evacuated to another hospital before and during the operation, and it had provided fuel and medical supplies to both hospitals.
Militants fired on its forces and they were “eliminated”, while weapons, including grenades, guns, munitions, and military equipment, were also seized in the raid, it said.
After news spread on Friday of Kamal Adwan – one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza – being burnt and raided by Israeli forces, a haunting video emerged, writes Sky News correspondent Yousra Elbagir.
Half-stripped men treading over rubble through a scene of full scale destruction with their arms raised and large tanks on either side.
One of the injured patients made to take the walk was being treated in the hospital with his wife and children by his side.
In the hours after being released he shared his experience from the safety of al Ahli hospital.
“The army came the night before and started firing rockets at the hospital and surrounding buildings,” he says. He looks weak and his clothes are grey with concrete dust.
“Yesterday between 5.30 and six, the army came to the hospital and called out [with a loudspeaker] that the director of the hospital must hand over all the displaced, the sick and wounded.”
The director of Kamal Adwan hospital Dr Hussam Abu Safiya had been sharing videos online sounding the alarm on intensified Israeli attacks on the hospital in a 10-day siege before the full raid. He has been detained in the raid.
“We all started leaving then the army stopped us and told the director, ‘I want them in their underwear without any clothes on and they should leave without clothes on’,” says the patient.
“So, we went out without clothes and walked a long distance to a checkpoint. They made us sit there still without any clothes all day in the freezing cold. Once we entered the checkpoint – it was humiliation, cursing and insults in an unnatural way.”
“When they finished the search they placed a number on the back of our necks and on our chest. After we were done with the search they loaded us on to trucks – still naked without any clothes on.”
He says they waited in the trucks for four hours before they were released and that the injured, sick, the medical staff and visitors all faced the same humiliating treatment.
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The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, over half of them women and children, and wounded more than 108,000 others, according to the health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The hospital has been hit multiple times over the past three months by Israeli troops waging an offensive in largely isolated northern Gaza against Hamas fighters it says have regrouped.
The health ministry said a strike on the hospital earlier this week killed five medical personnel.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was “appalled” by Friday’s raid, which it said put northern Gaza’s last major health facility “out of service”.
“The systematic dismantling of the health system and a siege for over 80 days… puts the lives of the 75,000 Palestinians remaining in the area at risk,” a statement said.
The Israeli military said in a statement: “The IDF will continue to act in accordance with international law regarding medical facilities, including those where Hamas has chosen to embed its military infrastructure and conduct terrorist activities in blatant violation of international law.”
