Gaza hospital director being held at notorious Israeli prison, say family
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Hussam Abu Safiya feared injured as Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza shut down after 11 weeks under siege. One of the few doctors still working in northern Gaza has been taken to an Israeli prison and his hospital shut down, his family believe. Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, was initially taken to the Sde Teiman detention camp, according to his son, who has been told that the doctor’s leg was badly injured during a raid on the hospital by Israeli soldiers.
![[A doctor in a white coat talking to other medics as a man lies on a gurney]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/70491da6f7289fff21617789d5b4535d4229639a/0_0_2970_1782/master/2970.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“We are so worried, we haven’t been able to sleep for three days because we didn’t know until today where he is,” said his son, Idrees Abu Safiya. Dr Munir al-Boursh, director of the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza, said that according to several witness accounts, Abu Safiya had been seen in detention at the prison and with several injuries.
Abu Safiya had kept the hospital running through more than 80 days of siege and attacks by Israeli forces amid an intensive military operation in the surrounding refugee camp. Eid Sabbah, head of the hospital’s nurses, said many medical staff had been detained and initially taken to different locations, including a nearby wedding hall and a school, but their current whereabouts were not known.
Israel has not said where Abu Safiya or the hospital’s other missing medical personnel are being held but claimed that the hospital was being used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. An Israeli military spokesman, Avichay Adraee, claimed 240 fighters had been arrested in the raid, alongside pictures on X of groups of men bound and blindfolded.
