Doctor at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital says director arrested by Israel
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Dr Mohammad Abu Salmiya was arrested, along with several other senior doctors.
PHOTO: AFP
Follow topic:
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories - A doctor at Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, told AFP that the facility’s director and several other medical personnel were arrested by Israeli forces on Nov 23.
The director, Dr Mohammad Abu Salmiya, has been frequently quoted by international media about the conditions inside Al-Shifa, a major focus of the Israeli ground offensive following the militants’ Oct 7 attacks.
The Israeli army, which raided the hospital last week, has alleged that Hamas fighters used a tunnel complex
Hamas and hospital officials have repeatedly denied the claims.
“Dr Mohammad Abu Salmiya was arrested along with several other senior doctors,” said Dr Khalid Abu Samra, a chief of department at the hospital.
An official in the Hamas-run Health Ministry specified to AFP that one other doctor and two nurses had been detained, as well as the hospital director.
The Israeli military confirmed that Dr Salmiya has been held for questioning over evidence that Hamas used Al-Shifa as a command and control centre.
Dr Salmiya was in charge of the sprawling complex as Hamas militants built up a network of military infrastructure and stored weapons inside the hospital and its grounds, the military said.
“In the hospital, under his management, there was extensive Hamas terrorist activity,” it said.
In a statement, Hamas said it “strongly denounces” the arrest of Dr Salmiya and his colleagues, calling on the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international organisations to work towards their immediate release.
Instructions to evacuate the hospital were issued on Nov 18, prompting the exodus of hundreds of patients displaced towards the supposedly safer south of the Palestinian territory.
Dr Salmiya told AFP last week he had received the evacuation order from Israeli forces after having refused a previous one.
But the Israeli army said the evacuations were carried out at the request of Dr Salmiya.
The military released an audio recording presented as a conversation between Dr Salmiya and a senior Israeli officer, in which the two men blamed each other for the evacuation.
On Nov 23, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said it joined forces with the United Nations to evacuate a further 190 wounded and sick people, their companions and medical staff from Al-Shifa to other hospitals in the south of the Gaza Strip.
The evacuation took nearly 20 hours due to delays at the checkpoint separating northern and southern Gaza, it said on X, formerly Twitter, adding that three paramedics had been detained, two of whom were subsequently released.
On Nov 22, Israeli soldiers escorted journalists to a tunnel shaft
Al-Shifa Hospital has been the scene of an extended Israeli special forces operation as part of its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, where the Hamas-run government says more than 14,000 people have been killed, most of them women and children.
It came after Hamas militants poured across the border in an unprecedented attack on Oct 7.
