Medics among hundreds detained by Israel after raid on Gaza hospital
Israeli forces detained more than 240 Palestinians from a north Gaza hospital they raided on Friday, including the hospital’s director and dozens of medical staff, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry and Israel’s military.
The Health Ministry said it was concerned for the well-being of Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, as some staff freed by the Israeli military late Friday said he had been beaten by soldiers.
The Israeli military said the hospital was being used as a command centre for Hamas military operations and those arrested were suspected militants. It said Abu Safiya had been taken for questioning as he was suspected of being a Hamas operative.
On Friday, Hamas dismissed Israel’s assertion that its fighters had operated from the hospital throughout the 15-month-old Gaza war, saying no fighters had been in the hospital. The group had not yet commented on the 240 arrests.
In its statement on Saturday, Hamas urged the UN and relevant international agencies to intervene urgently to protect the remaining hospitals and medical facilities in northern Gaza, and to supply them.
The group also called for UN observers to be sent to medical facilities in Gaza to refute the Israeli allegations that they were being used for military purposes.
The raid on the hospital, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza, put the last major health facility in the area out of service, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a post on X on Friday.
In a statement released Saturday, it said: “WHO is appalled by yesterday’s raid. The systematic dismantling of the health system and a siege for over 80 days on North Gaza puts the lives of the 75,000 Palestinians remaining in the area at risk.”
Some patients were evacuated from Kamal Adwan to the Indonesian Hospital, which is not in service, and medics were prevented from joining them there, the Health Ministry said. Other patients and staff were taken to other medical facilities.
Devastation in north Gaza
The Israeli military said 350 patients and medical personnel had been evacuated prior to the Kamal Adwan operation, while another 95 had been evacuated to the Indonesian Hospital during the operation, in co-ordination with local health authorities.
Separately, the Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli strikes across the enclave killed 18 Palestinians on Saturday, at least nine of them in a house in Maghazi camp in central Gaza.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes and fatalities.
In the past few months, Israeli forces have pushed people out and razed much of the area around the northern Gaza towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.
Amnesty International has accused the state of Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war in a new report, an allegation Israel vehemently denied, saying it has respected international law.
Palestinians have accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing by depopulating those areas to create a buffer zone. Israel denies it is doing this, saying it aims to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping in the areas.
The Israeli military said on Saturday it had begun operating overnight against targets in the Beit Hanoun area, adding that “troops are enabling civilians still in the area to move away for their own safety.”
It then ordered residents to leave and head toward southern parts of Gaza.
It said two rockets fired from north Gaza, including one toward Jerusalem, had been intercepted.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas, which previously controlled Gaza, has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, according to health officials in the enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Published at Sat, 28 Dec 2024 22:31:21 +0000
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologized to his Azerbaijani counterpart for what he called a “tragic incident” following the crash of an Azerbaijani airliner in Kazakhstan that killed 38 people, but he stopped short of acknowledging that Moscow was responsible.
Putin’s apology came amid mounting allegations that the plane had been shot down by Russian air defences attempting to deflect a Ukrainian drone strike near Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya.
An official Kremlin statement issued on Saturday said that air defence systems were firing near Grozny airport as the airliner “repeatedly” attempted to land there on Wednesday. It did not explicitly say one of these hit the plane.
The statement said Putin apologized to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev “for the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace.”
The readout said Russia has launched a criminal probe into the incident, and Azerbaijani state prosecutors have arrived in Grozny to participate.
The Kremlin also said that “relevant services” from Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are jointly investigating the crash site near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
The plane was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, to Grozny when it turned toward Kazakhstan, hundreds of kilometres across the Caspian Sea from its intended destination, and crashed while making an attempt to land. There were 29 survivors.
As more evidence points to the possibility a missile brought down an Azerbaijan Airlines flight, some of the survivors are speaking out about the moments before the plane crashed in Kazakhstan.
According to a readout of the call provided by Aliyev’s press office, the Azerbaijani president told Putin that the plane was subject to “external physical and technical interference,” although he also stopped short of blaming Russian air defences.
Aliyev noted that the plane had multiple holes in its fuselage and that the occupants had sustained injuries “due to foreign particles penetrating the cabin mid-flight.”
On Friday, a U.S. official and an Azerbaijani minister made separate statements blaming the crash on an external weapon, echoing those made by aviation experts who blamed the crash on Russian air defence systems responding to a Ukrainian attack.
Passengers and crew who survived the crash told Azerbaijani media that they heard loud noises on the aircraft as it was circling over Grozny.
Dmitry Yadrov, head of Russia’s civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia, said on Friday that as the plane was preparing to land in Grozny in deep fog, Ukrainian drones were targeting the city, prompting authorities to close the area to air traffic.
Yadrov said that after the captain made two unsuccessful attempts to land, he was offered other airports but decided to fly to Aktau.
As Azerbaijan mourns 38 people killed aboard a flight that crashed in Kazakhstan, experts are pointing to signs they say suggest a missile, potentially one from Russia, was responsible.
Earlier in the week, Rosaviatsia had cited unspecified early evidence as showing that a bird strike led to an emergency on board.
In the days following the crash, Azerbaijan Airlines blamed “physical and technical interference” and announced the suspension of flights to several Russian airports. It didn’t say where the interference came from or provide any further details.
Published at Thu, 26 Dec 2024 13:02:23 +0000
