‘He was the light of my life and I lost him’: How a famous surgeon died in an Israeli prison after being taken from Gaza hospital
As a famous orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Adnan Al-Bursh spent much of his career fixing broken limbs and broken bodies at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital.
One of the best-trained doctors in the enclave, a photo showing him covered in blood in Al-Shifa’s operating theatre went viral in 2018.
When war broke out last October, he worked around the clock. Pictures stored on his mobile phone show him standing in a hole, swinging a blunt-edged shovel as the hospital descended into crisis.
It had run out of fuel, food and basic pain relief and there was no more space to store dead bodies. Dressed in hospital scrubs, Dr Al-Bursh and his colleagues dug mass graves as the sound of explosions rang out behind the hospital’s walls.
Soon after the outbreak of the conflict, the surgeon, along with his wife Yasmin, realised that their world had changed forever.
“Adnan was needed every time there was a war,” she recalled. “So, I told him, ‘get ready, there will be lots of operations, they will need your help’. He went to hospital to receive the injured and stayed for 24 hours. He did not stop.”
Dr Adnan Al-Bursh’s wife and children
Dr Al-Bursh spent his days in the operating room and slept in the staff room at night.
He also kept a diary of sorts with his mobile phone, documenting the increasingly desperate scenes unfolding around him.
“Despite the pain, we are steadfast,” he said as he filmed the scene in a crowded operating theatre.
Dr Al-Bursh and others in the staff room
Israel said the foundations of Al-Shifa were laced with tunnels where Hamas operated a ‘command-and-control centre’, something Hamas denies.
As Israeli troops advanced towards the facility, Dr Al-Bursh captured the mood inside. Another video found on his mobile phone shows a colleague in the staffroom recalling a painful conversation with his wife.
“I remember that she only asked one thing of me, what do you think it was? That request was ‘just let me see you smile’.
“Smile. It’s the first thing I want to do after this war, if God saves us.”
Tens of thousands of people had to evacuate the hospital
By mid-November, Al-Shifa was under siege by Israeli troops.
A week later, patients, staff and some 50,000 displaced residents sheltering in the compound were ordered to evacuate.
Dr Al-Bursh captured the scene of long columns of people walking towards southern Gaza.
But the surgeon did not follow them. Instead, he went northeast to another facility – the Indonesian Hospital – still operating in northern Gaza. What he found on his arrival horrified him.
“I was shocked by the size of the catastrophe here,” he said in a video. “There are injured people who have been waiting for their operations for more than ten days. [Their] wounds were severely infected.”
On 20 November 2023, the Indonesian Hospital was surrounded by Israeli tanks and later that evening, projectiles were fired into the second floor. At least 12 people were killed.
Dr Al-Bursh survived with minor scrapes but the front entrance of the facility was torn apart. “The destruction is everywhere,” he said in another video.
A spokesman for the IDF denied that Israeli forces were responsible.
By early December 2023, Dr Al-Bursh had moved to a small hospital, also in the north, called Al-Awda.
A series of pictures, posted on the hospital’s social media page, show him examining patients with fatigue etched on his face.
These are the last known images taken of the surgeon.
These are the last known images taken of the surgeon at Al-Awda hospital
The last images were released on hospital social media
The Israeli military surrounded the hospital on 5 December, and the staff were worried about what the soldiers would do.
Dr Al-Bursh worked at Al-Awda alongside a friend and colleague, Dr Mohammad Obeid.
Eventually, the hospital’s director told them that they would have to leave the building.
“[The director] told us that the [Israeli army] have full data of all males aged between 14 and 65 at Awda hospital,” Dr Obeid said, tearfully. “They told him that if all men do not come down… they will destroy the Awda Hospital with all the women and children in it.”
We put this allegation to the IDF but they did not respond.
The men filed out of the hospital and five, including Dr Al-Bursh, were taken away.
“A soldier came up to us and called out Dr Adnan’s name, who was sitting next to me… I felt he was in a very difficult situation. The occupation soldier took him and the treatment was very rough.”
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The Israeli military base, Sde Teiman, where Dr Al-Bursh was taken. Pic: Breaking the Silence
In a brief statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed to Sky News that Dr Al-Bursh was detained by its personnel. On 19 December 2023, it says the surgeon was taken to an Israeli military base called Sde Teiman, which has been used for processing detainees since the early part of the war.
Allegations of physical, mental and sexual abuse are rife. A former camp inmate, Dr Khalid Hamouda, believes many of the prisoners at Sde Teiman were medical professionals.
“In the camp where I was, there were about 100 prisoners. I think at least a quarter of them were involved in healthcare. Some of them were doctors, nurses and technicians.”
Dr Hamouda was put to work by the guards at the base as their helper or ‘shawish’, and remembers being told to fetch Dr Al-Bursh at the gate. When he collected him, his fellow doctor said he had been badly beaten and felt pain all over his body.
“He thought he may have broken ribs,” Dr Hamouda said. “He was unable to even go to the toilet alone.”
Israeli soldiers stand outside Ofer military prison near Jerusalem. Pic: AP
The IDF told Sky News that after Dr Al-Bursh was processed, he left Sde Teiman on 20 December and became the “responsibility” of the Israeli Prison Service.
In April, the surgeon was taken to an incarceration facility near Jerusalem called Ofer Prison.
He died shortly after his arrival. News of the surgeon’s death was announced in a statement from two Palestinian prisoner support associations at the beginning of May. The Israelis offered no explanation or cause of death.
Sky News has spoken to people who claim to have witnessed the moments before Dr Al-Bursh’s death.
A prisoner, who says he previously knew Dr Al-Bursh in Gaza, provided details in a deposition to lawyers from the Israeli human rights organisation HaMoked.
“In mid-April 2024, Dr Adnan Al-Bursh arrived at Section 23 in Ofer Prison. The prison guards brought Dr Adnan Al-Bursh into the section in a deplorable state. He had clearly been assaulted with injuries around his body. He was naked in the lower part of his body.
“The prison guards threw him in the middle of the yard and left him there. Dr Adnan Al-Bursh was unable to stand up. One of the prisoners helped him and accompanied him to one of the rooms. A few minutes later, prisoners were heard screaming from the room they went into, declaring Dr Adnan Al-Bursh (was dead).”
Dr Al-Bursh treating a young patient earlier in the war
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While some people might suggest that Dr Adnan Al-Bursh was a terrorist, Daqqa said: “If you want to formally answer this question, he was not charged until now. And many of these detainees are not charged from Gaza.”
In a statement to Sky News, a spokesman for the Israel Prison Service said: “IPS is a law enforcement organisation that operates according to the provisions of the law and under the supervision of the state comptroller and many other official critiques.
“All prisoners are detained according to the law. All basic rights required are fully applied by professionally trained prison guards.
“We are not aware of the claims you described and as far as we know, no such events have occurred under IPS responsibility. Nonetheless, prisoners and detainees have the right to file a complaint that will be fully examined and addressed by official authorities.”
Dr Al-Bursh’s family paid tribute to him
Sky News was told by colleagues and Dr Al-Bursh’s wife Yasmin that he was in good physical condition before his arrest.
“He was the light of my life and I lost him,” Yasmin said.
Dr Al-Bursh was prepared to risk his life to save others. This story is one of a countless number, now buried under the immovable weight of Gaza’s recent past.
But Dr Al-Bursh lived and lost his life in a manner that demands acknowledgement, his friends and family members say.
Tom Fletcher, speaking on behalf of the United Nations, did not mince his words.
Gaza was suffering from famine, the evidence was irrefutable and Israel had not just obstructed aid but had also used hunger as a weapon of war.
His anger seeped through every sentence, just as desperation is laced through the report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
Gaza latest: UK calls out Israel for ‘manmade catastrophe’
Conditions are expected to worsen, it says, even though the Gaza Strip has been classified as a level 5 famine. There is no level 6.
A child attempts to access food from a charity kitchen in Khan Younis. Pic: Reuters
But it took only moments for the Israeli government to respond in terms that were just as strident. The report dismissed as wholly inaccurate, based on biased, inaccurate data and influenced not by fact, but by the whims of Hamas.
COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees humanitarian efforts in Gaza, claimed the IPC had ignored its data and presented a “one-sided report”, before claiming that “hundreds of truckloads of aid are still awaiting collection by the UN and international organisations”.
What is so striking is that there is no grey area between these two versions.
In one, Israel has obstructed the delivery of aid and allowed hunger to turn into famine; in the other, it is Hamas that has caused the crisis by stealing aid and exploiting hunger as a political tool to try to win global sympathy.
People in Beit Lahia take sacks of flour from an aid convoy en route to Gaza City. Pic: AP
Journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza, so we are reliant on the work of colleagues who live there.
But the images are striking – emaciated people holding begging bowls, people scrambling towards aid drops or clambering over trucks carrying bags of flour. And all around them, shattered buildings.
Aid is continuing to be dropped by air, but humanitarian groups say it is not enough. Pic: Reuters
We heard from a man in his 70s, who used to weigh 70kg, but who has lost almost half his body weight.
“Now, because of malnutrition, my weight has dropped to just 40,” Hassan Abu Seble said. “I suffered both a stroke and a heart attack. They had to put in a stent to help me recover, and I thank God that my organs are still functioning.”
The Israeli government, and many across the country, will maintain that Hamas bears the responsibility for everything that has happened to Gazans – that it was the attack on 7 October, 2023, that was the sole precipitant for the suffering, death and hunger that has followed.
But from around much of the rest of the world, the condemnation is deafening, accusing Israel of allowing famine to fester.
The body of a child is carried from the scene of an Israeli military strike in Gaza City. Pic: AP
David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary, said the Israeli government had caused a “man-made famine” by blocking the distribution of aid, and described that as a “moral outrage”.
The question, as so often before, is what that rhetoric leads to. And, so long as the United States doesn’t join the chorus of disapproval, does widespread global disapproval mean anything?
There is also a question now of Gaza’s future.
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In the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, we found a large sign that says “Make Gaza Jewish Again”. It is a slogan, and a sentiment, that is supported by plenty.
“Yes, of course I agree,” says one man as he walks past, carrying a large pack of drinks. It turns out that he used to live in a Jewish settlement in Gaza until it was shut by the Israeli government two decades ago, but he has never stopped believing that Gaza is rightly Israel’s property.
“The people there now – they should leave. They could go to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt. It is our land. And yes, I would like to go back there.”
He did not believe there was a famine. “They have lots of food,” he told me.
Another man, Avraham, was more conciliatory, but insisted there had never been a country like Israel “that is fighting a war against a country but is also sending in so much humanitarian aid for the people”.
Gaza City is now the focal point of so much. Famine is spreading from this heart just as troops prepare to encircle the city. A ceasefire could come, but so could a huge military assault. And all the while, the hunger will get worse.
Approval of a huge new Chinese embassy in London has been delayed by the government over redacted areas on the embassy’s plans.
Beijing hasn’t fully explained why there are blacked-out areas in its planning application after housing minister Angela Rayner demanded an explanation earlier this month.
The government has now delayed its decision over whether construction can go ahead from 9 September to 21 October, saying it needed more time to consider the application.
The Chinese embassy in London expressed “serious concern” over the delay and said host countries have an “international obligation” to support the construction of diplomatic buildings.
“The Chinese side urges the UK side to fulfil its obligation and approve the planning application without delay,” said the embassy in a statement.
Site of planned Chinese embassy
Royal Mint Court, the site of the proposed embassy. File pic: PA
DP9, the planning consultancy working for the Chinese government, said its client felt it would be inappropriate to provide full internal layout plans.
It added that additional drawings provided an acceptable level of detail, after the government asked why several areas were blacked out.
Protests have been held outside the proposed site. File pic: Feb 2025, PA
“The Applicant considers the level of detail shown on the unredacted plans is sufficient to identify the main uses,” said DP9 in a letter to the government.
“In these circumstances, we consider it is neither necessary nor appropriate to provide additional more detailed internal layout plans or details.”
The embassy, which would be the largest in Europe, is planned for the 216-year-old site of the old Royal Mint Court next to the Tower of London.
However, opposition from local residents, lawmakers and pro-democracy campaigners means planning approval has been delayed for the past three years.
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Earlier this month, the embassy described claims that the building could have “secret facilities” used to harm Britain’s
national security as “despicable slandering”.
However, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has ties to a network of politicians critical of the country, called the explanations “far from satisfactory”.
Luke de Pulford, who is a long-standing critic of the embassy plans, said the “assurances amount to ‘trust me bro'”.
A famine has been declared in Gaza City and the surrounding neighbourhoods.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a globally recognised system for classifying the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition – has confirmed just four famines since it was established in 2004.
These were in Somalia in 2011, and in Sudan in 2017, 2020, and 2024.
The confirmation of famine in Gaza City is the IPC’s first outside of Africa.
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the report said, adding that more than a million other people face a severe level of food insecurity.
Israel Gaza map
Over the next month conditions are also expected to worsen, with the famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, the report said.
Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions while acute malnutrition is projected to continue getting worse rapidly.
Over the next year, the report said at least 132,000 children will suffer from acute malnutrition – double the organisation’s estimates from May 2024.
Israel says no famine in Gaza
Volker Turk, the UN Human Rights chief, said the famine is the direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government.
“It is a war crime to use starvation as method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of wilful killing,” he said.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, has rejected the findings.
Israel’s foreign ministry said there is no famine in Gaza: “Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets.”
Another UN chief made a desperate plea to Israel’s prime minister to declare a ceasefire in the wake of the famine announcement.
Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said famine could have been prevented in the strip if there hadn’t been a “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries.
“My ask, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him. Enough. Ceasefire. Open the crossings, north and south, all of them,” he said.
The IPC had previously warned famine was imminent in parts of Gaza, but had stopped short of a formal declaration.
Palestinians struggle to get aid at a community kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: AP
The latest report on Gaza from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there were almost 13,000 new admissions of children for acute malnutrition recorded in July.
The latest numbers from the Gaza health ministry are 251 dead as a result of famine and malnutrition, including 108 children.
But Israel has previously accused Hamas of inflating these figures, saying that most of the children who died had pre-existing health conditions.
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