Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) sent letters to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Council Charles Michel, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, in addition to a number of governments of different countries. In its letter the organisation demanded urgent action to be taken to stop targeting the health sector in Gaza, and to investigate the serious violations committed by the Israeli occupation forces against health workers and medical facilities, following the occupation targeting Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip and committing one of the most heinous massacres since the beginning of the current war.
AOHR UK stated that the Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital, which represents the last lifeline in northern Gaza, forced patients to evacuate the hospital in an inhumane manner. It also arrested medical staff, headed by the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was subjected to brutal torture during his arrest by the occupation soldiers, according to eyewitness testimonies. He was flogged with an electric wire, and forced with other medical staff to take off their clothes during the field investigation in Al-Fakhoura area.
AOHR UK warned that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, and the rest of the detained doctors, would meet the same fate as Dr. Adnan Al-Barsh, who was killed in May 2024 as a result of severe torture inside the Israeli Ofer prison, more than four months after his arrest with a group of doctors while working at Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza.
AOHR UK emphasised that the crimes committed in Kamal Adwan Hospital constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits targeting medical facilities and their workers, stressing that these acts are war crimes that require urgent investigations and holding those involved accountable.
In its letters, AOHR UK explained the extent of the destruction that has befallen the health sector in Gaza and the deliberate targeting of health facilities and medical staff since the beginning of the war in October 2023, which has resulted in the destruction or disruption of 21 hospitals and 86 health facilities, and the killing of more than 1,062 health workers, including 135 scientists and academics in the medical field, according to reports issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, the World Health Organization, and the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
The organisation also called for urgent action to ensure the immediate and unconditional release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all detained medical personnel, and to ensure the delivery of medical supplies and fuel and the access of emergency medical teams.
AOHR UK stressed the need to open an independent international investigation into the systematic crimes being committed against the health sector in Gaza, to hold those responsible accountable, and to send international observers to the Gaza Strip to document these crimes against health facilities and protect them from any future attacks.
AOHR UK also stressed that the continued targeting of the health facilities in the Gaza Strip reflects a campaign to eliminate the entire health system and deprive the population of their basic right to receive treatment. It stressed that any international failure to act at this critical time will contribute to the completion of the genocide as planned by the occupation. AOHR UK called on the international community to take a serious and urgent position to stop this unprecedented genocide in modern history.
