Gaza hospital chief held at Israel's notorious Sde Teiman prison, released detainees say
The director of Gaza's last functioning hospital is being held at Israel's notorious Sde Teiman prison, where abuse - including torture, murder and rape - is rife, recently released detainees have said.
Hussam Abu Safiya has not been seen in public since Friday, when Israeli forces stormed the bombed-out Kamal Adwan Hospital following a nearly three-month blockade of northern Gaza.
All 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.
The last photo of Abu Safiya showed him walking alone towards a row of Israeli tanks that had amassed outside the facility.
On Saturday, the Israeli military said - without providing any evidence - that it was holding Abu Safiya on suspicions of "being a Hamas terrorist operative".
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On Sunday, several former detainees at Sde Teiman, a military prison in Israel's Negev desert, said the director and other medics from Kamal Adwan were being kept there.
A recently released Palestinian prisoner said he heard Abu Safiya's name being read out, while two former detainees told CNN that they had seen him at the prison.
Yahya Zaqout said that Abu Safiya was in the cell next to his.
"I heard them calling his name among the names they call every morning and night," he said in a video seen by Middle East Eye.
Meanwhile, Alaa Abu Banat, another recently released prisoner, said Abu Safiya and a medical team from Kamal Adwan were brought into Sde Teiman.
"They are all still in detention. They treated them really badly, especially the doctors," he told CNN.
Abu Banat said he heard that Abu Safiya had been beaten "until his eye was bleeding".
Abu Safiya's family told CNN in a statement: "Sde Teiman is known for brutality and torture. We can’t imagine what our father is going through in that place and if he is well or not, warm or cold… hungry or in pain.
"It is widely known the immense efforts he has made since the beginning of the war to support the only healthcare system for the residents of north Gaza."
MEE reached out to the Israeli army for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Calls are growing for Israel to release Abu Safiya, with the World Health Organization (WHO) saying it was "appalled" by the raid and MedGlobal, a humanitarian NGO providing healthcare in disaster areas, demanding his immediate release.
"His arrest is not only unjust - it is a violation of international humanitarian law, which upholds the protection of medical personnel in conflict zones," said Zaher Sahloul, president of MedGlobal, in a statement.
"MedGlobal urgently calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Dr Abu [Safiya]," he added.
Israeli forces have detained thousands of Palestinians since the 7 October attacks, with most being held and interrogated at Sde Teiman, even if they are non-combatants.
Torture, rape and murder are rife at the facility, with investigations by MEE, CNN and the New York Times finding widespread examples of abuse.
Over the past three months, Abu Safiya, a paediatrician, had 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 at risk 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," Abu Safiya said 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.
Constant attacks on hospitals
The Israeli military has been accused of deliberately targeting Gaza's health system through constant attacks on hospitals, ambulances and doctors since the 7 October Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
Israeli forces previously raided the two largest hospitals in the strip, al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and Naser Hospital in Khan Younis, destroying them in the process.
The Israeli military intensified its offensive on Kamal Adwan and northern Gaza in early October when a controversial proposal known as the "Generals' Plan" was presented to the Israeli government.
The plan said areas north of the Netzarim Corridor, which cuts Gaza into two sections, should be emptied of its residents so Israel could establish a "closed military zone".
Under the plan, anyone who chose to stay would be considered a Hamas operative and could be killed.
Since launching the plan, Israeli forces have been accused of exacerbating starvation and malnutrition to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, with Oxfam reporting last week that only 12 aid trucks had made it into northern Gaza this month.
Last month, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its ongoing war on the enclave.
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