Geneva — The head of the United Nations’ World Health Organization called Monday for the immediate release of Hossam Abu Safiyeh, director of the war-torn Gaza Strip’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who is being held by Israel’s military following a major raid on the facility. The Friday-Saturday assault on Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahia left northern Gaza’s last major health facility out of service and emptied of patients, the WHO said.
“Hospitals in Gaza have once again become battlegrounds and the health system is under severe threat,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X. “Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is out of service following the raid, forced patient and staff evacuation and the detention of its director. His whereabouts are unknown. We call for his immediate release.”
Israel’s military said Sunday that its forces had killed approximately 20 Palestinian militants and apprehended “240 terrorists” in the raid, calling it one of its “largest operations” conducted in the territory. The Israeli military said it had detained Abu Safiyeh, suspecting him of being a Hamas militant. When asked if he had been transferred to Israeli territory for further questioning, the military did not offer an immediate comment.
Israeli officials have consistently accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields, positioning its weapons and fighters in and underneath hospitals, schools and other vital infrastructure. The group, which has long been designated a terrorist organization by Israel and the U.S., has denied those accusations.
Tedros said the patients in critical condition at Kamal Adwan had been moved to the Indonesian Hospital, also in northern Gaza, “which is itself out of function.”
“Amid ongoing chaos in northern Gaza, WHO and partners today delivered basic medical and hygiene supplies, food and water to Indonesian Hospital and transferred 10 critical patients to Al-Shifa Hospital,” he said. We urge Israel to ensure their health care needs and rights are upheld.
He said seven patients along with 15 caregivers and health workers remained at the “severely damaged” Indonesian Hospital, “which has no ability to provide care.”
“Al-Ahli Hospital and Al-Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital in Gaza City also faced attacks today and both are damaged,” Tedros added. “We repeat: stop attacks on hospitals. People in Gaza need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid.”
The London-based charity Amnesty International also called on Israel to immediately and unconditionally release Abu Safiyeh, saying in a series of social media posts that the hospital director had become the “voice of Gaza’s decimated health sector.”
The charity has accused Israel’s military of genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza — an accusation Israel has repeated and vehemently rejected — and it accused the Israeli military of detaining “hundreds of Palestinian healthcare workers” without charge and subjecting them “to torture and other ill-treatment.”
Since October 6 this year, Israeli operations in Gaza have focused on the north, with officials saying their land and air offensive aims to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
Health officials in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory said Monday that the overall death toll in Gaza from Israel’s offensive had risen to 45,541, including 27 people the Health Ministry said had been killed over the previous 24 hours alone.
The ministry said at least 108,338 others had been wounded since Israel launched its offensive against Hamas. The war was launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack, which saw the militants kill some 1,200 people in Israel and kidnap 251 others.
Palestinians walk among debris following the Israeli attack on the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital and its surrounding buildings in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, Dec. 25, 2024. / Credit: Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut/Anadolu/Getty
Frigid winter temperatures have compounded the misery for Palestinians in Gaza after more than a year of war. Medics in the enclave have reported infants dying of hypothermia in recent weeks.
Dr. Fidda Al-Nadi, a doctor at the Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, which has not functioned fully since Israeli raids early this year, told CBS News last week that it was admitting one or two cases of hypothermia every single day, and that the youngest patients were the most vulnerable.
“In the stress we are living in, many children are born prematurely, and this predisposes them more to hypothermia,” Al-Nadi said.
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