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SvennoJ on 10 April 2025
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Gaza hospital director should be ‘revered’ not detained by Israeli military: UN envoy

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestine, has drawn attention to the fate of the former director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was detained without charge by Israeli forces in December.

As the Kamal Adwan Hospital was destroyed in Israel attacks late last year, Hussam Abu Safia remained at his post and with patients until he was taken to Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman military detention camp in Israel’s Negev Desert.

Not charged with any crime, the doctor was later transferred to Ofer Prison, located near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

“This Doctor should have been safe by now, under protected status, and [revered] by international leaders as an icon of Ethics,” Albanese wrote on social media.

“Instead he is still a hostage of Israel, which has abducted him without ever charging him,” she said.

Abu Safia’s lawyers told Al Jazeera in February that their client was been tortured and treated brutally in Israeli military prison.


Israeli medics demand prosecution of soldiers over killings of Red Crescent staff in Gaza

Israel’s Haaretz news outlet reports that about 360 Israeli medical professionals, half of them doctors, have signed a letter demanding an investigation and prosecution of Israeli troops involved in the killing of 15 Palestinian emergency workers in Gaza.

“Killing rescue and medical personnel is a blatant violation of international law,” the letter states, according to the Haaretz report.

There has been international outcry and calls at the United Nations for a full and independent probe into what the Palestine Red Crescent Society said was the deliberate and targeted killing by Israeli forces of eight of its staff as well as six Palestinian Civil Defence workers. A ninth paramedic was taken prisoner.

The Israeli forces, who opened fire on the PRCS’s clearly marked ambulances and emergency vehicles, buried the evidence of their crimes – along with the bodies of the slain paramedics – in shallow pits.


Gaza Health Ministry issues plea for medicine

The Health Ministry says stocks of essential medicines in Gaza hospitals and medical centres have reached “dangerous and unprecedented levels”.

Israel has blockaded the Strip for more than a month, cutting off the besieged enclave from food, fuel and medicine among other vital supplies.

Here are some data points shared by the ministry:

  • 37 percent of the essential drug list has zero stock.
  • 59 percent of the medical supplies list has zero stock.
  • 54 percent of cancer and blood disease medications have zero stock.
  • Surgery, intensive care and emergency departments are operating with depleted stocks of life-saving medications and supplies.
  • 80,000 diabetic patients and 110,000 hypertensive patients are unable to receive care.
  • The closure of crossings to medical supplies and medications exacerbates the crisis and adds catastrophic challenges to the provision of healthcare to patients and the wounded.