Israel defends Gaza hospital raid as UN calls for probe into attacks

Israel has defended its raid on a north Gaza hospital last week, while the UN human rights chief called the justification unsubstantiated and the World Health Organization urged Israel to release the hospital's director from detention.

Israel's UN ambassador in Geneva, Daniel Meron, posted on social media a letter he sent on Friday to the WHO and Volker Turk, the UN 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."

However, at Friday's UN Security Council meeting in New York, Turk said 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."

Turk added: "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."

Israel's Deputy UN Ambassador Jonathan Miller said more than "240 terrorists were apprehended, including 15 who participated in the October 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.

Regarding the director, Miller added: "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."

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 UN Dorothy Shea told the Security Council.

Palestinian UN 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."

Push for ceasefire

Israel has carried out airstrikes on dozens of Hamas targets in Gaza over the past 24 hours, it said on Friday, in attacks that Palestinian health authorities said had killed more than 110 people in two days.

The surge in operations and casualties comes amid a renewed push to reach a ceasefire in the 15-month-old war and return Israeli hostages before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.

Israeli mediators were dispatched to resume talks in Doha brokered by Qatari and Egyptian mediators and on Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden's administration, which is helping to broker the talks, urged Hamas to agree to a deal. 

Hamas said it was committed to reaching an agreement but it was unclear how close the two sides were.

The Gaza health ministry said more than 40 people were killed on Friday after 71 were killed a day earlier including in Al-Mawasi, an area in central Gaza previously declared a humanitarian safe zone by Israeli authorities.

The Israeli military said it had hit around 40 Hamas gathering points as well as command and control centers. It said it had taken numerous measures to reduce the risk of harming civilians, including using precise munitions, aerial surveillance and other intelligence.

It accused Hamas, the Islamist movement that formerly controlled Gaza, of placing fighters in civilian areas including buildings formerly used as schools, where it said troops had found a number of weapons. Hamas rejects accusations it deliberately uses the civilian population to shield fighters.

Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 45,717 Palestinians and wounded 108,856 since October 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave's health ministry said on Saturday.