Gaza health chief urges action to ‘save’ Dr Abu Safia before it’s too late

The director general of Gaza’s Ministry of Health has called for urgent action to “save” the life of detained Palestinian doctor Hussam Abu Safia before it is “too late”.

The paediatrician has been held by Israel since 2024 and “serious concerns are mounting” over his life and health, Dr Muneer al-Boursh posted on X on Saturday.

He noted reports that Abu Safia has been assaulted while in an Israeli detention facility and has sustained injuries to his eye, head and chest.

Abu Safia’s ongoing detention and lack of medical care have made his health condition a “source of extreme alarm that demands urgent action not postponed statements,” al-Boursh added.

Abu Safia was the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital who led the facility, one of the last functioning in northern Gaza, through an 85-day siege before Israeli forces raided it and detained him on December 27, 2024.

He has been held without charge under Israel’s unlawful combatant law, which permits indefinitely renewable detention; Israel’s supreme court rejected an appeal for his release in June. His lawyer, who visited him last month, reported new signs of beatings and torture. Rights groups, including Amnesty International and the United Nations Commission of Inquiry, have warned that his life is in imminent danger.

Al-Boursh said the “irony” of Abu Safia’s detention “is agonising”.

“Dr Hussam Abu Safia, who stayed by his patients’ side at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the bleakest of circumstances, now finds himself behind bars, stripped of his freedom, as fears grow for his physical safety and detention conditions.” he wrote.