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SvennoJ 4 days ago
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Amnesty demands Abu Safia’s immediate release

Amnesty International has joined the growing list of people and organisations calling on Israel to release Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital.

In a statement shared on X, Amnesty said it is “extremely concerned over” Abu Safia’s “fate and wellbeing” and that he “must be released immediately and unconditionally”.

Amnesty also called on Israel to release all Palestinians held arbitrarily noting that “Israel has detained hundreds of Palestinian healthcare workers from Gaza without charge or trial”.

It added: “Health workers have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment and been held in incommunicado detention.”



UN’s Palestine expert calls for Abu Safia’s release

Francesca Albanese said “all of us must do all we can to save” the Kamal Adwan Hospital’s director.

“For each Palestinian life that should and could have been saved in Gaza, we have been put to the test. And we have failed, over and over. We must not fail again,” she wrote on X.



WHO chief calls for Abu Safia’s release, end to attacks on hospitals

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus demanded the Kamal Adwan director’s “immediate release”, expressing concern over the Israeli raid that shut down the hospital and forced the displacement of patients and medical staff.

The WHO director-general said critical patients from Kamal Adwan were “moved to the Indonesian Hospital, which is itself out of function”.

He said his organisation and partners have delivered food, water and basic medical supplies to the Indonesian Hospital and transferred 10 critical patients to the nearby al-Shifa Hospital. But Israeli forces detained four patients during the transfer, he noted.

“We urge Israel to ensure their healthcare needs and rights are upheld,” he said.

Now, some seven patients along with 15 caregivers and health workers remain at the “severely damaged” Indonesian Hospital, “which has no ability to provide care”, he said.

Tedros also noted that two more hospitals in Gaza City, al-Ahli Hospital and al-Wafaa Rehabilitation Hospital, came under attack on Sunday, and that “both are damaged.”

The WHO chief said hospitals in Gaza “have once again become battlegrounds and the health system is under severe threat”. “We repeat: stop attacks on hospitals. People in Gaza need access to healthcare. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid. Ceasefire!” he added.



Palestinian lawmaker urges Katz to ‘not abandon Dr Abu Safia’

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is reporting that Ahmad Tibi, a prominent Arab member of Israel’s parliament, has asked Defence Minister Israel Katz if he can visit Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital.

Abu Safia is reportedly being held in the Sde Teiman base in Israel’s Negev desert.

“Given the harsh detention conditions, reports of widespread torture in prisons, and dozens of detainees who have died in recent months while in custody, including [Dr Adnan al-Bursh] in April of this year, I request to visit Dr Abu Safia as soon as possible,” Tibi is reported to have written to Katz.

“The notorious reputation of this facility, which endangers lives, is now known worldwide,” Tibi wrote. “We must not abandon Dr Abu Safia, the man who stayed with his patients until the very last moment.”

The doctor was taken by the Israeli army from Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya on Friday, after soldiers conducted a raid of the facility and then set fire to it.