Israeli forces arrest Gaza hospital chief after ‘burning doctors and patients alive’ middleeasteye.net

Israeli forces detained the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, after setting the health facility in northern Gaza on fire with doctors and patients inside, according to health officials.

The hospital was stormed by Israeli troops on Friday, following nearly three months of a suffocating blockade and constant air strikes on its departments and their vicinity.

The bombing caused several departments to catch fire, killing and wounding Palestinian medical workers and patients, according to Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.

All remaining medical staff, patients and their relatives were taken out of the hospital at gunpoint, forced to strip down to their underwear and transferred to an unknown location.

At the time of the raid, there were 350 people in the hospital, including 180 medical workers and 75 wounded people, according to the Gaza-based Government Media Office.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said dozens of doctors were taken to detention centres for interrogation.

On Saturday, it confirmed that Abu Safiya had been arrested.

Israeli forces violently beat him before his arrest, Bursh told Al Jazeera.

Over the past three months, Abu Safiya, a paediatrician, has published dozens of videos and sent out pleas to the international community to act against the Israeli attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital.

He repeatedly warned that the lives of patients and medical staff were in danger amid constant Israeli bombings and a siege preventing the entry of aid and food.

"Instead of receiving aid, we receive tanks… which are shelling the [hospital] building," said Abu Safiya in a video two months ago.

In late October, Abu Safiya’s son died as a result of an earlier Israeli raid on the hospital, according to health officials.

A month later, he was wounded in an Israeli air strike on the hospital complex.