GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza has voiced concern over the life and wellbeing of Dr. Husam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital who was kidnaped recently by Israeli forces from northern Gaza, warning of his exposure to physical liquidation.
In press remarks on Thursday, director of the ministry Dr. Munir al-Bursh said that the “Israeli occupation responded to the ministry’s request to know where Abu Safiya is being detained by saying that it does not have a detainee with that name.”
“The Israeli occupation is marking the new year with pictures of its arrest of the Kamal Adwan Hospital employees,” Bursh added.
Bursh said that the Israeli army “is motivated by its lust for killing and nothing more, while the victims are women and children.”
About 75,000 citizens in northern Gaza are deprived of access to medical care after all the hospitals there have been destroyed by the Israeli army and become out of service, according to Bursh.
For its part, the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) has warned that “the risks to the life of Kamal Adwan Hospital director Dr. Husam Abu Safiya are growing as time passes after the Israeli occupation army has denied it has documentation proving his detention.”
In a statement on Thursday, PPS said that Dr. Abu Safiya, like thousands of other detainees from Gaza, is facing the crime of enforced disappearance.
“Although there is clear evidence that Dr. Abu Safiya was arrested on December 12, 2024, the Israeli occupation has contradicted what it has previously said [about his detention] and the videos and photos it has published in this regard,” PPS added.
In a related context, two UN human rights experts on Thursday denounced Israel’s raid on an embattled hospital in northern Gaza, demanding an end to the “blatant assault” on health rights in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Reiterating charges that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza, the UN experts said they were “horrified” by the raid last Friday on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
“For well over a year into the genocide, Israel’s blatant assault on the right to health in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory is plumbing new depths of impunity,” the experts said.
The joint statement was from Francesca Albanese, the independent UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, and Tlaleng Mofokeng, special rapporteur on the right to health.
In their statement, Albanese and Mofokeng said they were “gravely concerned” at Abu Safiya’s detention and demanded his “immediate release.”
“Yet another doctor to be harassed, kidnapped and arbitrarily detained by the occupation forces,” they said.
“This is part of a pattern by Israel to continuously bombard, destroy and fully annihilate the realization of the right to health in Gaza.”
The experts also highlighted “disturbing reports” that Israeli forces had allegedly carried out extrajudicial executions of some people near the hospitals, including a Palestinian man reportedly holding a white flag.
They pointed to figures provided by the health ministry in Gaza indicating that at least 1,057 Palestinian health and medical professionals have been killed since the war started in October 2023.
