The director of Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Palestinian territories, was arrested by Israeli forces on Thursday over Hamas’s alleged use of the facility.
Hospital director Muhammad Abu Salamiya has been widely quoted by international media about conditions in Al-Shifa, a key focus of an Israeli ground offensive following attacks by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7.
The Israeli army, which raided the hospital last week, has claimed that Hamas militants used a tunnel complex beneath the facility in Gaza City to carry out attacks.
Hamas and hospital officials have repeatedly denied the claims.
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Palestinian health authorities said Salmiya, another doctor and two nurses were arrested.
The hospital director was detained for questioning after “evidence emerged that Shifa Hospital served as a Hamas command and control center under his direct leadership,” an Israeli military statement said.
There was “extensive Hamas terrorist activity” at the hospital while it was “under his direction,” it said, adding that a Hamas tunnel network used the facility’s electricity and other resources.
Whether the director will be subjected to further questioning depends on whether he is found to be “involved in terrorist activities,” it said.
In a statement, Hamas said it “strongly condemns” the arrest of Salmiya and his colleagues and called on the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international bodies to work toward their “immediate release.”
On Thursday evening, Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said that the Indonesian hospital in Gaza City had been “heavily bombed.”
“The generators were hit, as was a significant portion of the building,” he said. “We are concerned” about patients and staff at the hospital, he added.
Qudra added that 180 patients and staff remained in Al-Shifa.
“We are calling for their evacuation,” Qudra said. “They no longer have electricity, food or water.
“The Israeli army is shooting at the hospital and repeating over loudspeakers that they have to leave the hospital and threatening to bomb it,” he said.
Al-Shifa Hospital has seen extensive Israeli special forces operations as part of Israel’s war against militants in the Gaza Strip, and on Wednesday troops escorted journalists to a tunnel shaft at the complex, which they said was part of a vast underground network used by Hamas became.
Orders to evacuate the hospital were issued on Saturday, leading to an exodus of hundreds of patients and displaced people. Salmiya told AFP last week that he had received the evacuation order from Israeli forces.
But the Israeli army said the evacuations were carried out at Salmiya’s “request.”
The military released an audio recording depicting a conversation between Salmiya and a senior Israeli officer in which the two men blamed each other for the evacuation.
On Thursday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said it had joined forces with the United Nations to evacuate another 190 wounded and sick people, their companions and medical staff from Al-Shifa to other hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip.
The evacuation took nearly 20 hours due to delays at the checkpoint between north and south Gaza, it said on social media, adding that three medics were arrested, two of whom were subsequently released.
The Hamas-led government in Gaza says nearly 15,000 people have been killed since Israel’s military campaign began, most of them women and children.
It began after armed Hamas fighters poured across the border in an unprecedented attack on October 7. Israeli officials said about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and about 240 were taken hostage.
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