Israeli forces arrest Gaza hospital administrators after “burning doctors and patients alive.”

According to health officials, Israeli forces arrested Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, after they set fire to the health facility in northern Gaza containing doctors and patients.

The hospital was stormed by Israeli troops on Friday after nearly three months of a crushing blockade and constant air strikes on its wards and surrounding areas.

According to Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, the bombing set several departments on fire, killing and injuring Palestinian medical staff and patients.

All remaining medical staff, patients and their relatives were taken out of the hospital at gunpoint, forced to strip down to their underwear, and taken to an unknown location.

According to the Gaza-based Government Media Office, 350 people were in hospital at the time of the raid, including 180 medical personnel and 75 wounded.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said dozens of doctors were taken to detention centers for questioning.

On Saturday it was confirmed that Abu Safiya had been arrested.

He was brutally beaten by Israeli forces before his arrest, al-Bursh told Al Jazeera.

Over the past three months, pediatrician Abu Safiya released dozens of videos and made several appeals to the international community to take action against the Israeli attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital.

He repeatedly warned that the lives of patients and medical staff were in danger amid constant Israeli bombing and a siege that prevented access to aid and food.

“Instead of receiving help, we receive tanks … shelling the (hospital) building,” Abu Safiya said in a video two months ago.

According to health authorities, Abu Safiya’s son died in hospital in late October as a result of injuries sustained in an earlier Israeli raid.

A month later he was injured in an Israeli airstrike on the hospital complex.

The patients are threatened with death

Meanwhile, the fate of other medical workers and civilians abducted from the hospital by Israeli forces on Saturday remains unknown.

Al-Bursh said the Health Ministry had lost contact with 10 of its medical staff.

Some medical workers have been released and are awaiting evacuation to Gaza City, Dr. Rawia Tamboura opposite Middle East Eye.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said some of the patients, including those in critical condition, were forcibly transferred to the war-torn Indonesian hospital, which is out of service due to Israeli attacks.

The patients faced a “tough night” and remained in a “dark and extremely difficult situation,” the ministry warned.

“Without water, without electricity, without blankets, without food and without supplies, the countdown to the loss of their lives has begun,” it continued.

Their lives were in immediate danger, especially as most medical staff were prevented from treating patients at the Indonesian hospital.

“We urge all concerned institutions and parties to find a solution for the patients and injured currently in the Indonesian hospital,” the ministry said in a statement.

The attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital came a day after 50 Palestinians were killed in an airstrike on a building on the hospital grounds. At least five medical workers, as well as their wives, parents and children, were killed in Thursday’s attack.

The crackdown has left northern Gaza with no functioning health centers.

Since Israel tightened its blockade of northern Gaza in October, Kamal Adwan Hospital has been operating at minimal capacity, providing life-saving services to newborns in neonatal intensive care units and other patients in intensive care units.

“The occupation deals the final blow to the remaining health system in northern Gaza”

– Palestinian Ministry of Health

The other two hospitals in the area, the Indonesian Hospital and al-Awda Hospital, ceased operations weeks ago due to ongoing Israeli attacks.

The Israeli offensive in the northern Gaza Strip, launched on October 5, was followed by the submission to the Israeli government of a controversial proposal called the “Generals Plan.”

The plan calls for the ethnic cleansing of areas north of the Netzarim Corridor, which divides Gaza in two, so that Israel could establish a “closed military zone.”

Under the plan, anyone who wanted to stay would be considered a Hamas operative and could be killed.

“The occupation today deals the final blow to the remaining health system in northern Gaza,” the Health Ministry said on Friday after the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital.

“This fits perfectly with the generals’ plan to exterminate the population in the northern Gaza Strip.”

Intentional destruction of the health system in the Gaza Strip

Since the onslaught on northern Gaza began, Israeli forces have been accused of exacerbating famine and malnutrition in order to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.

Oxfam reported earlier this month that only 12 aid trucks had reached northern Gaza this month.

The Israeli military has also been accused of deliberately destroying Gaza’s health system through constant attacks on hospitals, ambulances and doctors since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7.

Earlier, Israeli forces raided and destroyed the Strip’s two largest hospitals, Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and Naser Hospital in Khan Younis.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, they have also killed more than 1,150 health workers and arrested 300 since the war began in Gaza.

Last month, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel is also facing a genocide trial at the International Court of Justice over its war against the enclave.

Additional reporting by Ahmed Dremly in Gaza City