Israeli forces arrest dozens of health care workers in Gaza

TEL AVIV, Israel – Israeli forces have arrested dozens of medical workers at one of the last functioning hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip amid an Israeli offensive that has taken a dire humanitarian toll and drawn a rare threat from the United States that it could cut off military aid.

The director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced the arrests of 44 health care workers late Friday. He said Israeli forces had raided the facility, Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalia, shortly after WHO workers delivered medical supplies to the hospital. The Israeli military said it had assisted in that delivery.

“We urge for hospitals, health workers and patients to be protected,” Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

The Gaza Health Ministry described scenes of chaos at the hospital Friday night. It said Israeli troops had searched the facility and fired shots inside the building, causing panic among hundreds of people sheltering inside. It also said two children in the intensive care unit had died after generators stopped operating.

The ministry said Saturday the arrested health care workers included all of the hospital’s male medical workers.

The Israeli military did not respond to questions Saturday about the arrests, and on Friday it said only that it was “operating in the area” of the hospital. Israel has said the offensive is targeting what it has described as a Hamas resurgence in northern Gaza.

Israel launched a new offensive in northern Gaza three weeks ago, in areas close to Israel’s southern border, saying that its aim was to quash what it described as a Hamas resurgence in the area. But the United Nations says the operation has trapped roughly 400,000 people in a ruined landscape devoid of adequate food and other essential goods.

The situation has drawn criticism from world leaders, including Biden administration officials, who warned Israel in a letter that a failure to ease suffering in the north could prompt a cutoff in military aid.

Ghebreyesus said Friday that Israeli forces had arrested the health care workers and damaged four ambulances in what he described as a “siege and attacks on health care workers.”

He said that three health workers and another hospital employee had been injured and that roughly 600 people were sheltering in the hospital Friday night.

Khalil al-Muqayed, 79, was among those who had sought shelter at the hospital after Israel’s northern offensive began, according to his grandson, Wasim Alkhaldi, 29.

On Friday, al-Muqayed told his grandson over the phone that Israeli forces had detained him at the hospital, according to Alkhaldi, who works for the Fatah party, the main rival faction to Hamas.

Alkhaldi has not been able to reach his grandfather since then, he said.

“He’s old and suffers from chronic heart problems,” said Alkhaldi, who lives in the West Bank. “We don’t have any contact with him or know his fate.”

A spokesperson for Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency response organization, said that two members of its staff were also arrested at the hospital Friday.

Israeli forces have besieged and raided Kamal Adwan Hospital before and detained its director. This month, the Gaza Health Ministry said the hospital was one of three that the Israeli military had ordered to evacuate at the start of its northern offensive.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.