Director Muhammad Abu Salmiya and several other medical staff have been arrested as Israel continues its Gaza offensive.
The Israeli army has arrested the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip, according to a doctor and media reports.
Muhammad Abu Salmiya was arrested along with several other “senior doctors,” Khalid Abu Samra, a department head at the hospital, told AFP on Thursday.
The arrest was also reported by the Israel Broadcasting Authority and confirmed in a post on Salmiya’s social media platform X cousinAdham Abu Selmiya.
“Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the director of the al-Shifa medical complex, was arrested by Israeli occupation forces. And previously, two Palestinian medics had been arrested by Israeli occupation forces,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from the southern Gaza Strip.
“This is a clear sign that there is no immunity in the Gaza Strip, neither for medical personnel, civil defense teams nor journalists, as the attacks have reached all levels of the Palestinian community.”
Al-Shifa Hospital was a key focus of Israel’s ground offensive in the northern Gaza Strip.
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.
Indonesian hospital
Meanwhile, Munir al-Bursh, the director general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said on Thursday that the Israeli army had given people at the Indonesian hospital only a few hours to evacuate the facility in northern Gaza.
He said there were about 200 patients still in hospital after about 450 patients were evacuated yesterday, and he told Al Jazeera that bombing continued from all sides in the area.
“This hospital is considered the main central hospital still operating in northern Gaza, alongside two other central hospitals,” Al Jazeera’s Abu Azzoum said, adding that it houses patients, medical staff and displaced people.
“Both hospitals [al-Shifa and the Indonesian hospital] “We are experiencing a very serious and even critical situation as Israeli troops are still surrounding the situation and even exerting significant control,” our correspondent said.
On Wednesday, the U.N. humanitarian office said the Israeli army had “obstructed” a convoy of ambulances transporting 190 wounded and sick patients from Al-Shifa hospital to the south, causing the journey to take nearly 20 days lasted hours.
The long delay at the Israeli military checkpoint that separates the northern and southern Gaza Strip is endangering “the lives of the wounded and sick,” according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).
The medical service had previously said that 14 of its ambulances, two UN buses and other vehicles, as well as “a number of medical teams” from Al-Shifa Hospital were involved in the evacuation of patients.
According to the PRCS, three paramedics and a companion of one of the wounded patients were held in the cold for more than three hours while the patients were transferred to hospitals in the south.