By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Israel on Friday defended its raid on a north Gaza hospital last week while the U.N. human rights chief called the justification unsubstantiated and the World Health Organization urged Israel to release the hospital’s director from detention.
Israel’s U.N. ambassador in Geneva, Daniel Meron, posted on social media a letter he sent on Friday to the WHO and Volker Turk, the U.N. human rights official. It said the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital a week ago was “triggered by irrefutable evidence” that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants were using the hospital.
He said Israeli forces had taken “extraordinary measures to protect civilian life while acting on credible intelligence.”
Turk told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that Israel did not “substantiate many of these claims, which are often vague and broad. In some cases, they appear to be contradicted by publicly available information.”
“I am calling for independent, thorough and transparent investigations into all Israeli attacks on hospitals, healthcare infrastructure and medical personnel, as well as the alleged misuse of such facilities,” he told the 15-member body.
Israel’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Jonathan Miller said more than “240 terrorists were apprehended, including 15 who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre” in southern Israel in 2023, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip. The hospital’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya, was also detained in the raid.
“We suspect him of being a Hamas operative as hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were hiding inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital under his management. He is currently being investigated by Israeli security forces,” Miller said.
The WHO is deeply concerned about Abu Safiya, said WHO representative Richard Peeperkorn, adding: “We have lost contact with him since and call for his immediate release.”
The United States is gathering information about Abu Safiya, Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dorothy Shea told the Security Council.
Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour broke down in tears as he recalled words that a doctor from Médecins sans Frontières, Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, wrote at Gaza’s Al Awda Hospital before he was killed in a strike in November 2023.
Mansour said that Nujaila had written on a hospital whiteboard used for planning surgeries: “Whoever stays until the end, will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us.”
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
