Iran Nobel winner hurt in prison clashes with guards: family

Jailed Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi. (File/Reuters)
Jailed Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi. (File/Reuters)
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Updated 09 August 2024
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Iran Nobel winner hurt in prison clashes with guards: family

Jailed Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi. (File/Reuters)
  • “The protest by prisoners against the execution of Reza Rasaei led to a violent crackdown by prison guards and security agents,” Mohammadi’s family said
  • The family said that after being punched in the chest, Mohammadi suffered a respiratory attack and intense chest pain, causing her to collapse and faint

PARIS: Jailed Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi and other female inmates were hurt in clashes that erupted at Tehran’s Evin prison following a spate of executions, her family said, raising new concerns for her health.
Iranian authorities acknowledged a confrontation had taken place on Tuesday but blamed Mohammadi for a “provocation” and denied any of the prisoners had been beaten.
Human rights activist Mohammadi, 52, who won the 2023 prize for her campaigning including against the death penalty, has been jailed since November 2021, and has spent much of the past decade in and out of prison.
The Paris-based family of Mohammadi emphasized it had had no direct contact with her since her right to make phone calls was revoked in November.
But it said it had learnt from several other families of detainees held in Evin that clashes erupted on Tuesday as the female prisoners launched a protest in the yard against the executions.
According to rights groups, around 30 convicts were hanged this week, including Gholamreza (Reza) Rasaei, who the Iranian judiciary said was executed on Tuesday in connection with 2022 protests.
“The protest by prisoners against the execution of Reza Rasaei led to a violent crackdown by prison guards and security agents,” Mohammadi’s family said in a statement late Thursday, citing the reports.
“Several women who stood in front of the security forces were severely beaten. The confrontation escalated, resulting in physical injuries for some prisoners.”
The family said that after being punched in the chest, Mohammadi suffered a respiratory attack and intense chest pain, causing her to collapse and faint on the ground in the prison yard.
She was bruised and treated in the prison infirmary but not transferred to a hospital outside, it said.
“We are deeply worried about her health and well-being under these circumstances,” the family said.
Relatives and supporters had earlier this month raised concern about Mohammadi’s condition, saying they had been informed of the results of medical tests carried out in July “which showed a worrying deterioration of her health.”
In the past eight months, Mohammadi has been suffering from acute back and knee pain, including a slipped disc. In 2021, a stent was placed on one of her main coronary arteries due to a blockage.
Iran’s prison authority denied that prisoners were beaten and blamed the confrontation on Mohammadi and other inmates who it said had broken the lock of an outer door.
Two prisoners “had heart palpitations due to the stress,” but medical examinations determined that their general condition “is favorable,” it said in a statement, according to the Tasnim news agency.
Reports have suggested increasing tensions in the women’s wing of Evin prison after two Kurdish female activists, Sharifeh Mohammadi and Pakhshan Azizi, were sentenced to death on charges of membership of an outlawed group.
Rights groups say that Iran has intensified the use of capital punishment after a brief lull in the run-up to the June-July election that brought reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian to power.
Authorities executed 29 people at two prisons in the Tehran satellite city of Karaj on Wednesday alone, according to Norway-based Iran Human Rights.
Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, “is extremely concerned” by the reports, spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell told journalists in Geneva. “This represents an alarmingly high number of executions in such a short period of time.”
Mohammadi has kept campaigning even behind bars and strongly supported the protests that erupted across Iran following the September 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old Iranian Kurd had been arrested for an alleged breach of Iran’s strict dress rules for women.
She received a new one-year prison term in June for “propaganda against the state,” adding to sentences that already amounted to 12 years and three months of imprisonment, 154 lashes, two years of exile and various social and political restrictions.


Bangladeshi killed in air strike in Lebanon: govt

Bangladeshi killed in air strike in Lebanon: govt
Updated 12 sec ago
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Bangladeshi killed in air strike in Lebanon: govt

Bangladeshi killed in air strike in Lebanon: govt

DHAKA: A Bangladeshi worker died in a air strike in Lebanon, Dhaka’s foreign ministry said Sunday, as the Israeli bombardment hampered efforts to repatriate citizens.
The foreign ministry estimates that between 70,000 and 100,000 of its nationals are working in Lebanon, many as laborers or domestic workers.
The first flights, organized by Dhaka’s government with the UN’s International Organization for Migration, brought home scores of Bangladeshis from Beirut last month.
Mohammad Nizam, 31, was killed on Saturday afternoon in a reported strike as he stopped at a coffee shop on the way to work in Beirut, Bangladesh’s ambassador to Lebanon, Javed Tanveer Khan said in a statement.
Mohmmad Jalaluddin said his younger brother Nizam had lived in Beirut for more than a decade, and had not been among the estimated 1,800 Bangladeshis who had registered for an evacuation flight home.
“We want to bury him in our ancestral home, and are now waiting for the government’s response,” Jalaluddin told AFP.
But senior Bangladeshi foreign ministry official Shah Mohammad Tanvir Monsur said it was challenging to arrange a flight into Beirut.
“With the ongoing war, there are hardly any flights from Lebanon to Bangladesh,” Monsur said.
“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to repatriate our citizens who have registered to return home.”
Israel drastically escalated its air campaign against Lebanon’s Hezbollah group in September, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
It has since launched a ground offensive intended to push the group back from its northern border.
Hezbollah has been firing thousands of projectiles into Israel over the last year, displacing tens of thousands of Israelis.
The war has killed at least 1,930 people in Lebanon, since it began on September 23, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures, though the real number is likely higher due to data gaps.
Israel’s military says 38 soldiers have been killed in the Lebanon campaign since it began ground operations on September 30.


Ambassador of Japan to Saudi Arabia Iwai Fumio hosts reception to celebrate JSDF’s 70th anniversary

Ambassador of Japan to Saudi Arabia Iwai Fumio hosts reception to celebrate JSDF’s 70th anniversary
Updated 7 min 54 sec ago
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Ambassador of Japan to Saudi Arabia Iwai Fumio hosts reception to celebrate JSDF’s 70th anniversary

Ambassador of Japan to Saudi Arabia Iwai Fumio hosts reception to celebrate JSDF’s 70th anniversary
  • Ambassador Iwai welcomed the enhanced cooperation in the field of defense and security between Japan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Japan: Japan’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia IWAI Fumio recently hosted a reception at his residence on the occasion of the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ (JSDF) 70th anniversary.

H.E. Major General Shallah bin Thaar AlSalmi, Royal Saudi Land Forces, and a number of government officials and diplomats graced the occasion.

During his speech, Ambassador Iwai said the JSDF has now become a very active contributor to the international peace and stability through its participation in the international peace efforts such as counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden and the MFO in the Sinai Peninsula.

Ambassador Iwai welcomed the enhanced cooperation in the field of defense and security between Japan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia particularly after the visit of HRH Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman to Japan on July 31, 2023.

He mentioned the active communication on possible defense equipment and technology, cooperation on women’s empowerment and defense training and exchange programs.


Giga-projects are here to stay, but AI likely to change future conception, say industry experts

Giga-projects are here to stay, but AI likely to change future conception, say industry experts
Updated 49 min 10 sec ago
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Giga-projects are here to stay, but AI likely to change future conception, say industry experts

Giga-projects are here to stay, but AI likely to change future conception, say industry experts
  • AI might reject tall structures, advise ‘greater square footage,’ predicts one expert
  • Machine-learning still a long way to go before replacing human decision-making

SAN DIEGO, USA: Twenty years ago when a major project was being conceived, it would be built and then the real estate representatives would take over, working to fill the colossal buildings.

But today the physical completion of a development is just an initial part of the process. New technology is now being used to collect vast amounts of valuable data that can determine the success of both giga-projects and megaprojects.

In some cases this will mean the downscaling of an initiative such as The Line, while others will be accelerated to meet strict deadlines such as the Saudi Expo 2030 project.

In April 2024, Saudi Arabia’s Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan said some of the Kingdom’s projects would be adapted to current economic and geopolitical challenges.

“I think that what we will see is a new rationalization of dates,” Naji Atallah, head of construction and manufacturing, EMEA Emerging Markets at Autodesk, told Arab News.

Speaking on the sidelines of the recent Autodesk University 2024: The Design and Make Conference in San Diego, US, he said decisions would be based on new priorities.

“Something like a new entertainment city won’t get the same prioritization as the Saudi Expo or projects for the World Cup, should Saudi Arabia win the bid, that have a definite deadline. But I think these projects will still be happening,” he added.

On the reduction of Saudi Arabia’s The Line, Atallah said: “Being able or just having the vision of building something that big is the limit of our means … The new scale is more manageable.”

But he said despite the change of size, it did not take away from the ambition. “The scale is smaller, but the ambition is still really large with what we are seeing now.”

He said that projects like the Red Sea islands might not have the same scale of one aspect, but as a giga-project it is broken down into many different parts.

“Part of the mandate of the Red Sea islands project is to create new tourism opportunities,” Atallah explained. “AI will help in the better decision-making to help set new targets that are not necessarily about immediate financial return.”

And in the case of the Red Sea project, a key example was the introduction of scuba diving in the area.

There is still a lot of work to be done on AI — it is only as good as the information it receives. But as the data banks continue to grow, the technology will learn and become more knowledgeable about future and existing projects.

Change is most likely with giga-projects, said Autodesk CEO and president Andrew Anagnost, in an interview with Arab News. “I don’t think giga-projects are going to go away … but I do think that more often than not AI is going to advise against these projects.”

Anagnost said he believed AI was more likely going to advise against massively tall structures and instead suggest “greater square footage.”

AI would also possibly suggest different kinds of capabilities inside, such as sustainable energy generation, or multiple-use buildings that could serve as a home and workspace.

“I think AI is definitely going to challenge some of these projects,” he added.

But the capabilities of AI are only as great as the data it receives, and we remain a long way away from computers taking over the world.

Also there remains a lot of mistrust in the collection of data, but the more information companies have, the more cost-effective and reliable their products become.

Design and construction are not new concepts; humans have been creating tools, shelter, and the means to build for millions of years.

However, there is surprisingly little information available on the physical structures that exist around the world.

The US cloud-based security and management company noted that its clients in the architecture, engineering and construction industry have quadrupled their data storage from 0.9 terabytes in 2017 to 3.5 TB in 2021.

But according to the investment banking firm FMI Corp., 95.5 percent of the data that is being gathered by AEC firms is not being used.

And this is information that could tell governments, designers and architects of today and the future how to more successfully develop existing and new products — whether a chair, or new city. 

AI is very much dependent on the information that he described as 3D data and which is still lacking. “It’s kind of a paradox. We live in a 3D world, but the 3D data is scarce,” Ousama Lakhdar-Ghazal, director of trusted AI at Autodesk, explained.

“When we look around and see all these 3D objects around us, we can easily picture them, but to have that represented in a digital world is actually very .”

The collection of the data continues, but there remains a lot to be learned and that can only happen as the amount of data is gathered.

This information can help with predicting the flow of a flood, or the fuel consumption of a new, existing or future building.

“Like humans function better the more information they have, AI operates the same way, it needs to learn,” Lakhdar-Ghazal said.

And the learnings of AI are entirely reliant on the information it is given, so it is still influenced by human input.

“We are hoping that AI might at some point be able to maybe help solve some of the societal problems we face — that’s the driver,” he added.

On concerns over the evolution of AI, Lakhdar-Ghazal acknowledged that society tends to fear what it does not know.

“Most of the people working on AI are at a level (of a) Ph.D. (graduate), but for laypeople there’s a lot of unknown, there’s a lot of not understanding how it actually works.”

While fear of technological advances is not new, he said it would take time to educate people to accept that the benefits outweigh potential drawbacks.

“The point of AI is to help solve tangible problems. But it would still be up to humans to make the decision. AI can help identify labor-intensive, high-cost, low-return tasks, and help cut overheads.”

But the practice of saving time has its own limitations and at some point optimization is reached — there is no more time that can be saved.

But Lakhdar-Ghazal said the focus can always be shifted to improve areas including fuel efficiency, or other working practices, to cut overheads.


‘Stop the war’, say Israelis demanding return of Gaza hostages

‘Stop the war’, say Israelis demanding return of Gaza hostages
Updated 03 November 2024
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‘Stop the war’, say Israelis demanding return of Gaza hostages

‘Stop the war’, say Israelis demanding return of Gaza hostages
  • Critics wonder why truce has still not materialized over a year after Gaza war began
  • Protestors hope for international intervention, including from US, to stop Gaza war

TEL AVIV: Hundreds of Israeli protesters in Tel Aviv voiced their frustration with the government on Saturday for failing to secure a truce deal to bring the remaining hostages in Gaza home.
Flag-waving demonstrators in the country’s commercial hub held placards with slogans including “Deal now,” “Stop the war” and “We won’t abandon them,” and beat drums and chanted: “Why are they still in Gaza?“
“There have been countless opportunities to end this crisis and each one was torpedoed by the government,” said demonstrator Zahiro Shahar Mor, a 52-year-old bank employee from Tel Aviv.
“The cycle of violence is escalating week after week and we see no end,” added Mor, whose uncle Avraham Munder was killed in captivity in Gaza, and who is campaigning for the release of others’ loved ones.
Critics have questioned why a truce has still not materialized now that Israel has achieved many of its war aims, including last month’s killing of Hamas’s leader Yahya Sinwar.
Israeli and US officials as well as some analysts have said Sinwar was an obstacle to reaching a truce deal in the war between Israel and Hamas.
Ifat Kalderon, a prominent anti-government protester afraid for her cousin still held in Gaza, blamed Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.
“Each hostage deal they start to talk about, he sabotages. He always blamed Sinwar, but now there is no Sinwar. But every time he finds another reason,” the 50-year-old stylist told AFP.
“It’s a bloody war, we need to stop it. Enough. So many soldiers are dying. And ordinary citizens,” she said, referring to civilians from both sides of the conflict paying with their lives.
The war erupted on October 7, 2023 after Palestinian militants attacked Israel, resulting in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,314 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry the United Nations considers reliable.
During the October 7 attack, Palestinian militants seized 251 hostages, of whom 97 are still in Gaza. The Israeli military says 34 of them are dead.
Some at the rally — organized by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group — brought up the plight of Israel’s soldiers, who are exhausted more than a year into the Gaza war.
Others hoped for international intervention, including from the United States, which holds a presidential election on Tuesday.
“I hope whoever wins will be adult enough to take the kids in the Middle East by the ear and force them to the negotiating table,” said protester Mor.
He said he was “disappointed, frustrated and angry” at the lack of a hostage deal but was “keeping the hope for the people who are still alive” in Gaza.
Sinwar’s killing had spurred hope that fresh life could be breathed into months of fruitless negotiations for a truce with hostage and prisoner releases.
The talks have been mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
A Hamas official said Friday the group received a proposal from Egypt and Qatar for a short-term truce in Gaza but had rejected it.
He said the group had responded by restating its position that “what the Palestinian people want is a complete, comprehensive and lasting ceasefire.”
Protester Simone Spak Safran said she believed the Israeli government “couldn’t care less” about the hostages.
A few “times an agreement was not reached, and not only because of Hamas. I don’t expect anything from this government,” the 77-year-old from Herzliya told AFP.


Still wrecked from past Israeli raids, hospitals in northern Gaza come under attack again

Still wrecked from past Israeli raids, hospitals in northern Gaza come under attack again
Updated 03 November 2024
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Still wrecked from past Israeli raids, hospitals in northern Gaza come under attack again

Still wrecked from past Israeli raids, hospitals in northern Gaza come under attack again
  • The Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals still have not recovered from the damage, yet are the only hospitals even partially operational in the area.

JERUSALEM: They were built to be places of healing. But once again, three hospitals in northern Gaza are encircled by Israeli troops and under fire.
Bombardment is pounding around them as Israel wages a new offensive against Hamas fighters that it says have regrouped nearby. As staff scramble to treat waves of wounded, they remain haunted by a war that has seen hospitals targeted with an intensity and overtness rarely seen in modern warfare.
All three were besieged and raided by Israeli troops some 10 months ago. The Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals still have not recovered from the damage, yet are the only hospitals even partially operational in the area.
Medical facilities often come under fire in wars, but combatants usually depict such incidents as accidental or exceptional, since hospitals enjoy special protection under international law. In its yearlong campaign in Gaza, Israel has stood out by carrying out an open campaign on hospitals, besieging and raiding at least 10 of them across the Gaza Strip, some several times, as well as hitting multiple others in strikes.
It has said this is a military necessity in its aim to destroy Hamas after the militants’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. It claims Hamas uses hospitals as “command and control bases” to plan attacks, to shelter fighters and to hide hostages. It argues that nullifies the protections for hospitals.
“If we intend to take down the military infrastructure in the north, we have to take down the philosophy of (using) the hospitals,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said of Hamas during an interview with The Associated Press in January after the first round of hospital raids.
Most prominently, Israel twice raided Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the biggest medical facility in the strip, producing a video animation depicting it as a major Hamas base, though the evidence it presented remains disputed.
But the focus on Shifa has overshadowed raids on other facilities. The AP spent months gathering accounts of the raids on Al-Awda, Indonesian and Kamal Adwan Hospitals, interviewing more than three dozen patients, witnesses and medical and humanitarian workers as well as Israeli officials.
It found that Israel has presented little or even no evidence of a significant Hamas presence in those cases. The AP presented a dossier listing the incidents reported by those it interviewed to the Israeli military spokesman’s office. The office said it could not comment on specific events.
Al-Awda Hospital: ‘A death sentence’
The Israeli military has never made any claims of a Hamas presence at Al-Awda. When asked what intelligence led troops to besiege and raid the hospital last year, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.
In recent weeks, the hospital has been paralyzed once again, with Israeli troops fighting in nearby Jabalia refugee camp and no food, water or medical supplies entering areas of northern Gaza. Its director Mohammed Salha said last month that the facility was surrounded by troops and was unable to evacuate six critical patients. Staff were down to eating one meal a day, usually just a flat bread or a bit of rice, he said.
As war-wounded poured in, exhausted surgeons were struggling to treat them. No vascular surgeons or neurosurgeons remain north of Gaza City, so the doctors often resort to amputating shrapnel-shattered limbs to save lives.
“We are reliving the nightmares of November and December of last year, but worse,” Salha said. “We have fewer supplies, fewer doctors and less hope that anything will be done to stop this.”
The military, which did not respond to a specific request for comment on Al-Awda hospital, says it takes all possible precautions to prevent civilian casualties.
Last year, fighting was raging around Al-Awda when, on Nov. 21, a shell exploded in the facility’s operating room. Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, two other doctors and a patient’s uncle died almost instantly, according to international charity Doctors Without Borders, which said it had informed the Israeli military of its coordinates.
Dr. Mohammed Obeid, Abu Nujaila’s colleague, recalled dodging shellfire inside the hospital complex. Israeli sniper fire killed a nurse and two janitors and wounded a surgeon, hospital officials said.
By Dec. 5, Al-Awda was surrounded. For 18 days, coming or going became “a death sentence,” Obeid said.
Survivors and hospital administrators recounted at least four occasions when Israeli drones or snipers killed or badly wounded Palestinians trying to enter. Two women about to give birth were shot and bled to death in the street, staff said. Salha, the administrator, watched gunfire kill his cousin, Souma, and her 6-year-old son as she brought the boy for treatment of wounds.
Shaza Al-Shouraim said labor pains left her no choice but to walk an hour to Al-Awda to give birth. She, her mother-in-law and 16-year-old brother-in-law raised flags made of white blouses. “Civilians!” her mother-in-law, Khatam Sharir, kept shouting. Just outside the gate, a burst of gunfire answered, killing Sharir.
On Dec. 23, troops stormed the hospital, ordering men ages 15 to 65 to strip and undergo interrogation in the yard. Mazen Khalidi, whose infected right leg had been amputated, said nurses pleaded with soldiers to let him rest rather than join the blindfolded and handcuffed men outside. They refused, and he hobbled downstairs, his stump bleeding.
“The humiliation scared me more than death,” Khalidi said.
The hospital’s director, Ahmed Muhanna, was seized by Israeli troops; his whereabouts remain unknown. One of Gaza’s leading doctors, orthopedist Adnan Al-Bursh, was also detained during the raid and died in Israeli custody in May.
In the wreckage from the November shelling, staff found a message that Abu Nujaila had written on a whiteboard in the previous weeks.
“Whoever stays until the end will tell the story,” it read in English. “We did what we could. Remember us.”
Indonesian Hospital: ‘Patients dying before your eyes’
Several blocks away, on Oct. 18, artillery hit the upper floors of Indonesian Hospital, staff said. People fled for their lives. They’d already been surrounded by Israeli troops, leaving doctors and patients inside without enough food, water and supplies.
“The bombing around us has increased. They’ve paralyzed us,” said Edi Wahyudi, an Indonesian volunteer.
Two patients died because of a power outage and lack of supplies, said Muhannad Hadi, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Palestinian territories.
Tamer Al-Kurd, a nurse at the hospital, said around 44 patients and only two doctors remain. He said he was so dehydrated he was starting to hallucinate. “People come to me to save them. … I can’t do that by myself, with two doctors,” he said in a voice message, his voice weak. “I’m tired.”
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had facilitated the evacuation of 29 patients from Indonesian and Al-Awda hospitals.
The Indonesian is Northern Gaza’s largest hospital. Today its top floors are charred, its walls pockmarked by shrapnel, its gates strewn with piled-up rubble — all the legacy of Israel’s siege in the autumn of 2023.
Before the assault, the Israeli army claimed an underground command-and-control center lay beneath the hospital. It released blurry satellite images of what it said was a tunnel entrance in the yard and a rocket launchpad nearby, outside the hospital compound.
The Indonesia-based group that funds the hospital denied any Hamas presence. “If there’s a tunnel, we would know. We know this building because we built it brick by brick, layer by layer. It’s ridiculous,” Arief Rachman, a hospital manager from the Indonesia-based Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, told the AP last month.
After besieging and raiding the hospital, the military did not mention or show evidence of the underground facility or tunnels it had earlier claimed. When asked if any tunnels were found, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.
It released images of two vehicles found in the compound — a pickup truck with military vests and a bloodstained car belonging to an abducted Israeli, suggesting he had been brought to the hospital on Oct. 7. Hamas has said it brought wounded hostages to hospitals for treatment.
During the siege, Israeli shelling crept closer and closer until, on Nov. 20, it hit the Indonesian’s second floor, killing 12 people and wounding dozens, according to staff. Israel said troops responded to “enemy fire” from the hospital but denied using shells.
Gunfire over the next days hit walls and whizzed through intensive care. Explosions sparked fires outside the hospital courtyard where some 1,000 displaced Palestinians sheltered, according to staff. The Israeli military denied targeting the hospital, although it acknowledged nearby bombardment may have damaged it.
For three weeks, wounded poured in — up to 500 a day to a facility with capacity for 200. Supplies hadn’t entered in weeks. Bloodstained linens piled up. Doctors, some working 24-hour shifts, ate a few dates a day. The discovery of moldy flour on Nov. 23 was almost thrilling.
Without medicines or ventilators, there was little doctors could do. Wounds became infected. Doctors said they performed dozens of amputations on infected limbs. Medics estimated a fifth of incoming patients died. At least 60 corpses lay in the courtyard. Others were buried beneath a nearby playground.
“To see patients dying before your eyes because you don’t have the ability to help them, you have to ask yourself: ‘Where is humanity?’” asked Dergham Abu Ibrahim, a volunteer.
Kamal Adwan: ‘This makes no sense’
Kamal Adwan Hospital, once a linchpin of northern Gaza’s health system, was burning on Thursday of last week.
Israeli shells crashed into the third floor, igniting a fire that destroyed medical supplies, according to the World Health Organization, which had delivered the equipment just days before. The artillery hit water tanks and damaged the dialysis unit, badly burning four medics who tried to extinguish the blaze, said the hospital’s director, Hossam Abu Safiya.
In videos pleading for help over the past weeks, Abu Safiya had fought to maintain his composure as Israeli forces surrounded the hospital. But last weekend, there were tears in his eyes.
“Everything we have built, they have burned,” he said, his voice cracking. “They burned our hearts. They killed my son.”
On Oct. 25, Israeli troops stormed the hospital after what an Israeli military official described as an intense fight with militants nearby. During the battle, Israeli fire targeted the hospital’s oxygen tanks because they “can be booby traps,” the official said.
Israeli forces withdrew after three days, during which Palestinian health officials said nearly all of Kamal Adwan’s medical workers were detained, an Israeli drone killed at least one doctor and two children in intensive care died when generators stopped working.
Days later, a drone struck Abu Safiya’s son in nearby Jabalia. The 21-year-old had been wounded by Israeli snipers during the first military raid on Kamal Adwan last December. Now he is buried in the yard of the hospital, where just Abu Safiya and one other doctor remain to treat the dozens of wounded pouring in each day from new strikes in Jabalia.
The Israeli military said troops detained 100 people, some who were “posing as medical staff.” Soldiers stripped the men to check for weapons, the military said, before those deemed militants were sent to detention camps. The military claimed that the hospital was “fully operational, with all departments continuing to treat patients.” It released footage of several guns and an RPG launcher with several rounds it said it found inside the hospital.
Kamal Adwan staff say more than 30 medical personnel remain detained, including the head of nursing, who is employed by MedGlobal, an American organization that sends medical teams to disaster regions, and Dr. Mohammed Obeid, the surgeon employed by Doctors without Borders who previously worked at Al-Awda Hospital and had moved to Kamal Adwan.
The turmoil echoed Israel’s nine-day siege of Kamal Adwan last December. On Dec. 12, soldiers entered and allowed police dogs to attack staff, patients and others, multiple witnesses said. Ahmed Atbail, a 36-year-old who had sought refuge at the hospital, said he saw a dog bite off one man’s finger.
Witnesses said the troops ordered boys and men, ranging from their mid-teens to 60, to line up outside crouched in the cold, blindfolded and nearly naked for hours of interrogation. “Every time someone lifted their heads, they were beaten,” said Mohammed Al-Masri, a lawyer who was detained.
The military later published footage of men exiting the hospital. Al-Masri identified himself in the footage. He said soldiers staged the images, ordering men to lay down rifles belonging to the hospital guards as if they were militants surrendering. Israel said all photos released are authentic and that it apprehended dozens of suspected militants.
As they released some of the men after interrogation, soldiers fired on them as they tried to reenter the hospital, wounding five, three detainees said. Ahmed Abu Hajjaj recalled hearing bursts of gunfire as he made his way back in the dark. “I thought, this makes no sense — who would they be shooting at?”
Witnesses also said a bulldozer lumbered into the hospital compound, plowing into buildings. Abu Safiya, Abu Hajjaj and Al-Masri described being held by soldiers inside the hospital as they heard people screaming outside.
After the soldiers withdrew, the men saw the bulldozer had crushed tents that previously sheltered some 2,500 people. Most of the displaced had evacuated, but Abu Safiya said he found bodies of four people crushed, with splints from recent treatment in the hospital still on their limbs.
Asked about the incident, the Israeli military spokesman’s office said: “Lies were spread on social media” about troops’ activities at the hospital. It said bodies were discovered that had been buried previously, unrelated to the military’s activities.
Later, the military said Hamas used the hospital as a command center but produced no evidence. It said soldiers uncovered weapons, but it showed footage only of a single pistol.
The hospital’s director, Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlout, remains in Israeli custody. The military released footage of him under interrogation saying he was a Hamas agent and that militants were based in the hospital. His colleagues said he spoke under duress.
The fallout
Hagari, the military spokesperson, said hospitals “provide a life of their own ... to the (Hamas) war system.” He said hospitals were linked to tunnels allowing fighters movement. “And when you take it, they have no way to move. Not from the south to the north.”
Despite often suggesting hospitals are linked to Hamas’ underground networks, the military has shown only one tunnel shaft from all the hospitals it raided — one leading to Shifa’s grounds.
In a report last month, a UN investigation commission determined that “Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza.” It described Israeli actions at hospitals as “collective punishment against the Palestinians in Gaza.”
Some patients now fear hospitals, refusing to go to them or leaving before treatment is complete. “They are places of death,” Ahmed Al-Qamar, a 35-year-old economist in Jabalia refugee camp, said of his fear of taking his children to the hospital. “You can feel it.”
Zaher Sahloul, the president of MedGlobal who has also worked in Gaza during the war, said the sense of safety that should surround hospitals has been destroyed.
“This war has become a scar in the minds of every doctor and nurse.”