The Israeli army announced the arrest of the director of a major hospital in the Gaza Strip. The reasons? The military forces said in a statement that the man, identified as Hosam Abu Safiya, was detained for interrogation because he is suspected of being an alleged terrorist.
The Israeli army announced this Saturday, December 28, the end of an operation in an important hospital in the Gaza Strip. He stated that there was a Hamas command center in that compound.
This is the Kamal Adwan hospital, in Beit Lahia, it was the last large hospital operating in northern Gaza. The Israeli army announced the arrest of the establishment’s director, Hosam Abu Safiya, for questioning for being “suspected of being a Hamas terrorist.”
According to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-ruled Strip, soldiers took “dozens of medical staff from Kamal Adwan Hospital” to “a detention center for interrogation,” including doctor Abu Safiya.
It is now “empty” and “out of service”, following the launch of the Israeli army’s attack the day before, declared the World Health Organization (WHO) referring to the hospital.
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the deadly attack by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023, Israel has accused the movement’s fighters of using hospitals as a base to prepare and launch attacks against its troops. , something that Hamas denies.
On Friday, December 27, the army launched its operation against the Kamal Adwan hospital, used “as a hideout by terrorists,” he said, according to the news agency. EFE.
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“The army and intelligence services completed a targeted operation against a Hamas command center at the Kamal Adwan hospital,” he said in a statement.
“The forces detained more than 240 terrorists in the surrounding area,” he added.
“Some of those arrested, the Army detailed, tried to pass themselves off as patients or flee in ambulances.” He added in a statement that among those arrested are 15 militiamen who participated in the October 7, 2023 attacks, as well as Hamas engineers and anti-tank missile agents who used the hospital as a hideout.
“Despite calls not to allow terrorists to exploit hospitals for military activities, we identified that terrorists were using Kamal Adwan Hospital as a command center for their military operations,” the military statement said.
According to Israel, during initial on-the-ground interrogations by Shin Bet agents “many terrorists who left the hospital testified that they had participated in terrorist activities in the area.”
The security forces said that, before starting the operation, 95 patients, companions and medical personnel were evacuated, while a large part of the 350 people who were in the hospital were transferred days before.
He noted that most of these people were transferred to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which was completely destroyed last Wednesday, although Israel claims that it delivered 5,000 liters of fuel for its generators.
He stressed that in addition to the arrests of people, numerous weapons were seized, including grenades, pistols, ammunition and military equipment.
“During the operation, the terrorists fired anti-tank missiles and rocket launchers at the troops, who quickly eliminated them with the support of the air force without causing any casualties in our ranks,” the Army stressed.
This morning Israel released about 400 people from all those it arrested in Kamal Adwan, who reported degrading treatment as they were forced to walk to another place – many of them injured or sick -, in addition to being beaten and forced to undress to be searched.
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