Gaza hospital director facing ‘serious deterioration’ in health in Israeli custody: Rights group
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An Israeli human rights organization on Thursday warned of a “serious deterioration” in the health of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who has been in Israeli custody since Dec. 27, 2024, Anadolu reports.
Physicians for Human Rights said one of its lawyers recently visited Abu Safiya at Ofer Prison, west of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, and documented the conditions of his detention.
According to the group, Abu Safiya has lost nearly 25 kilograms, suffers from scabies without receiving proper treatment, and faces a severe decline in his overall health. He has not appeared before a judge since March, has not been interrogated, and remains unaware of the charges against him.
The organization said the doctor is subjected to violence, ill-treatment and denial of medical checkups despite a history of heart disease and high blood pressure. His detention conditions reportedly include food shortages, lack of clean clothing, and repeated assaults by prison guards.
The group noted that more than 100 medical workers from Gaza have been detained since Israel’s war on the enclave began in October 2023, most without formal charges, calling the practice “a blatant violation of international law.”
Naji Abbas, who heads the group’s prisoners’ department, urged Israel to release Abu Safiya and other detained health workers immediately, calling their detention a “moral and legal crime.” He appealed to the international community to intervene.
READ: Israel threatens to stop Gaza-bound aid flotilla despite global appeals
In February, Israeli media aired video footage showing Abu Safiya in custody, shackled hand and foot and appearing visibly exhausted. Days earlier, Israeli authorities had placed him under “unlawful combatant” status, amid reports of torture, abuse and medical neglect.
At the end of March, an Israeli court extended his detention for six months, according to a statement by the Hamas-run Office for Prisoners’ Affairs.
Abu Safiya has also suffered personal losses during the war. His son Ibrahim was killed when Israeli forces raided Kamal Adwan Hospital on Oct. 26, 2024. A month later, he himself was injured in an Israeli strike on the hospital but refused to leave and continued treating patients.
He was eventually taken into custody on Dec. 27, 2024, when Israeli troops stormed the facility, forced him out at gunpoint and destroyed the hospital, leaving it out of service.
The Israeli army has killed more than 65,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave uninhabitable and led to starvation and the spread of diseases.
READ: Over 2,500 Palestinians killed while seeking food aid in Gaza: Israeli rights group
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Bolivian president accuses US and Israel of ‘practicing genocide’
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Bolivian President Luis Arce addressed the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, launching a harsh critique of the US. He accused Washington of causing pain and death globally and said that a “genocide is currently being practiced by the decision of two countries,” referring to Israel and the US, in Gaza, Anadolu reports.
“Today, the echoes of war drums are sounding,” Arce said, specifically targeting Washington. He argued that Donald Trump and other powerful sectors in the US have an “obsessive desire” to cause pain and death around the world.
The Bolivian president asserted that the “threat of death stalks Latin America and the Caribbean.” He said the US Southern Command has mobilized in the region with “war potential,” including missiles, planes, helicopters, and submarines.
According to Arce, the US argues it is in the region to “fight drug trafficking and organized crime,” but claimed that, “if it were true, it would begin to confront both of these issues in its own country.” He said that the deployment is actually a pretext to promote the “militarization of a region” and to carry out an “intervention in Venezuela … which possesses extremely important natural resources, especially oil, which the North intends to control.”
READ: UN commission of inquiry accuses Israeli president, prime minister of inciting genocide in Gaza
He said the US military operations seek to “attempt to regain control of Latin America and the Caribbean, based on undermining democracy, promoting militarization, and employing other colonialist tactics.”
Arce said that the world continues to bear the consequences of wars, blockades, and unilaterally imposed sanctions, which he believes contradict the UN’s founding principles.
He cited the economic blockade against Cuba as a prime example, referring to the millions in losses caused by the six-decade-long unilateral action by the US government. Arce said the blockade stemmed from “imperialism’s rejection of the region’s first socialist revolution.”
“The threat of death also runs through the Middle East,” Arce said, referring to the violence in the Gaza Strip, with the participation of Israel and the US, “which want to accelerate the displacement of the Palestinian people in the shortest possible time.”
READ: US pressure delays UEFA suspension of Israel over Gaza war
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Over 2,500 Palestinians killed while seeking food aid in Gaza: Israeli rights group
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Israeli human rights group B’Tselem on Thursday affirmed that Israeli forces have killed more than 2,500 Palestinians in recent months while they tried to access food aid in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands remain trapped amid acute famine, Anadolu reports.
The group released a video from the Zikim Crossing, the only entry point through which aid could reach northern Gaza until its closure on Sept. 12. According to B’Tselem, civilians walked for hours in desperate search of food, only to be met with Israeli gunfire.
Witnesses described chaotic scenes of crowds rushing toward aid trucks under fire, with many killed and wounded while rescue teams were unable to reach them.
Among the victims was Ahmad Abu Rukbah. His brother Talal told B’Tselem that after hours of waiting near Zikim, they finally managed to obtain a sack of flour. On their way back, heavy gunfire broke out again, striking Ahmad in the chest. Talal said he tried to stop the bleeding with his shirt, but Ahmad died instantly.
B’Tselem said that since May, more than 2,500 Palestinians have been killed and over 18,500 injured while trying to reach aid convoys. The rights group accused Israel of weaponizing famine as part of its ongoing genocide in Gaza.
In July, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, citing the systematic destruction of Palestinian society and the deliberate dismantling of the enclave’s health care system.
The Israeli army has killed more than 65,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave uninhabitable and led to starvation and the spread of diseases.
READ: UN, EU condemn use of force against Gaza-bound aid flotilla
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‘Greece is aiding Netanyahu government’s genocidal project: Former Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis
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Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has accused Athens of “violating International Law to aid and abet the Netanyahu government’s genocidal project” after a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla was attacked by drones off southern Crete, Anadolu reports.
Varoufakis, a prominent author, opposition politician, and commentator, said on the US social media company X that he had spoken to the crew of the Family, the main vessel of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was struck on the night of Sept. 23 by “a swarm of drones with explosives and CS (tear) gas.”
The flotilla, he said, had requested urgent help from the Greek Coast Guard to repair damage and provide protection while sailing through Greece’s Search and Rescue area.
“Remarkably, nauseatingly to be precise, the Greek Coastguard turned both requests down!” he said.
“Such is the determination of the Greek government to aid and abet Israel’s genocide in Gaza and, more generally, its ethnic cleansing of Palestine, that the Greek authorities took the step of refusing assistance that the Law of the Sea obliges them to provide.”
According to Varoufakis, the refusal highlights how “readily, in a bid to satisfy (Israeli Prime Minister) Netanyahu, the Greek government has forfeited not only its responsibilities but also its sovereignty.”
READ: Pro-Palestinian group protests outside Israeli-linked hotel in Greece
Under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, he added, “a long process by which Greece has become a satellite of the last Apartheid State is now complete,” referring to Israel’s policies of discriminating against and oppressing Palestinians.
He also pointed to wider evidence of complicity. On the night of the flotilla attack, Varoufakis claimed, a Beechcraft King Air 350 spy plane took off from the US Air Force base at Souda in northwestern Crete and flew south.
The aircraft, he said, belongs to the US leasing company Metrea Special Aerospace ISR and had previously been used to monitor Gaza from a British base in the Greek Cypriot Administration.
“One thing is clear from all of the above,” Varoufakis added.
“Through a mixture of omission and commission, the Greek government is violating International Law to aid and abet the Netanyahu government. Our party, MeRA25, will fight this government on the streets, in the workplaces, across a country – Greece – which refuses to be counted as complicit with Israel’s genocide.”
Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave all but uninhabitable and led to starvation and the spread of diseases.
READ: Slovenia declares Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu persona non grata
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