Israel-Hamas war: Gazan doctors appeal for help after IDF arrests hospital chief
Doctors in Gaza have appealed for international help after the arrest of the director of al Shifa hospital by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
One fellow hospital director told Sky News: “This is unbelievable and unacceptable. It is a crime.”
Muhammad Abu Salmiya, who’d been a constant critical voice on media outlets about the IDF action around Gaza’s main hospital, was arrested on Thursday by the Israeli military.
He was part of a convoy moving patients and relatives out of the hospital in the north to the south of Gaza.
Dr Muhammed Abu Salmiya has been arrested
Israel-Gaza latest: ‘Children killed’ in airstrike hours before truce set to begin
The IDF has insisted a Hamas command and control centre was placed beneath the hospital and issued a statement saying: “In the hospital, under his management, there was extensive Hamas terrorist activity.
“Findings of his involvement in terrorist activity will determine whether he will be subject to further questioning.”
The Israeli military has filmed its own footage and distributed it to media outlets which it claims shows a tunnel network under the hospital which was used by Hamas.
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Israel shows ‘tunnel complex’
One fellow Gaza hospital director, Dr Youssef al Akkad, told Sky News from the Gaza European hospital that he knew both Dr Salmiya and the layout of al Shifa hospital well and the claims were baseless.
“All he wants to do is save lives,” he said of his fellow doctor.
“Now, he is in the jail… in prison… this is unbelievable and unacceptable and I believe that all the international community should stand against this criminal and shout loudly that this shouldn’t happen to the hospital and to the hospital managers and directors. This is a crime.”
Dr Youssef al Akkad from the Gaza European Hospital
The bombing of al Shifa and the nearby Indonesian hospital has meant large numbers of patients have been moved to other hospitals in the south.
‘Exposed brain infected with worms’
Dr al Akkad said his own hospital alone had overnight received four bus-loads of seriously injured patients and 20 ambulances packed full of wounded.
Pictures he shared with Sky News showed patients being helped down the bus steps including a young boy with both legs broken.
A wounded child at the Gaza European hospital
He said he carried some of the patients out including a three-year-old boy with horrific infected head injuries.
“His skull was broken and his brain matter was open and he was alive, can you imagine?” he said.
“We took him down to the emergency and we were trying to clear his wounds and there were worms coming out of his brain matter. We cannot, do not have the medicines to deal with these injuries anymore.”
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Evacuated patients from al Shifa hospital arrive at the Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis
As we spoke to him by phone, he walked down the stairs from his office and into an emergency room packed with wounded children.
He struggled to hear us over the children’s screams as he showed us the scene in the ward using his phone camera.
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“They all have head wounds from collapsed buildings after the strikes,” he said.
“They’ve only just come into the hospital in the last half hour.”
An injured child at the Gaza European hospital
He pointed his camera phone to one little girl with a still-bleeding head wound and told us: “She keeps crying for her mother but her mother is seriously ill in the ICU now.”
“We are drowning here,” he told us. “The situation is very critical now and alarming. We have triple the number of patients that we have the capacity to cope with.”
The truce cannot come soon enough for the doctors.
“We are hoping it will allow us time to move some of the more seriously injured through Rafah Crossing and into Egypt,” he said, “because otherwise they will die”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate against the Houthis and their Iranian “masters” after the group launched a missile attack on the country’s main international airport.
A missile fired by the group from Yemen landed near Ben Gurion Airport, causing panic among passengers in the terminal building.
“Attacks by the Houthis emanate from Iran,” Mr Netanyahu wrote on X. “Israel will respond to the Houthi attack against our main airport AND, at a time and place of our choosing, to their Iranian terror masters.”
Israeli police officers investigate the missile crater. Pic: Reuters
The missile impact left a plume of smoke and briefly halted flights and commuter traffic at the airport. Some international carriers have cancelled flights to and from Tel Aviv for several days.
Four people were lightly wounded, paramedic service Magen David Adom said.
Air raid sirens went off across Israel and footage showed passengers yelling and rushing for cover.
The attack came hours before senior Israeli cabinet ministers were set to vote on whether to intensify the country’s military operations in the Gaza Strip, and as the army began calling up thousands of reserves in anticipation of a wider operation in the enclave.
Houthi military spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree said the group fired a hypersonic ballistic missile at the airport.
Iran’s defence minister later told a state TV broadcaster that if the country was attacked by the US or Israel, it would target their bases, interests and forces where necessary.
Israel’s military said several attempts to intercept the missile were unsuccessful.
Air, road and rail traffic were halted after the attack, police said, though it resumed around an hour later.
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Yemen’s Houthis have been firing missiles at Israel since its war with Hamas in Gaza began on 7 October 2023, and while most have been intercepted, some have penetrated the country’s missile defence systems and caused damage.
Israel has previously struck the group in Yemen in retaliation and the US and UK have also launched strikes after the Houthis began attacking international shipping, saying it was in solidarity with Palestinians over Israel’s war with Hamas.
The Israeli Air Force is regarded as one of the country’s most elite units.
So, when hundreds of current and former pilots call for an end to the war in Gaza to get the hostages out, Israelis take notice.
This month, 1,200 pilots caused a storm by signing an open letter arguing the war served mainly “political and personal interests and not security ones”.
The pilots’ protest letter
Part of the letter translated
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the original letter was written by “bad apples”.
But Guy Paron, a former pilot and one of those behind the letter, said the Israeli government had failed to move to phase two of the ceasefire deal with Hamas, brokered under US President Donald Trump.
That deal called for a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of all the remaining hostages. Mr Netanyahu continues to argue that the war must continue to put pressure on Hamas.
Mr Paron said the (Israeli) government “gave up or violated a signed agreement with Hamas” and “threw it to the trash”.
“You have to finish the deal, release the hostages, even if it means stopping that war,” he argued.
It’s not the first time Israeli pilots have taken up a cause. Many of them also campaigned against Mr Netanyahu’s 2023 judicial reforms.
“In this country, 1,000 Israeli Air Force pilots carry a lot of weight,” Mr Paron added.
“The Air Force historically has been the major force and game-changer in all of Israel’s wars, including this current one. The strength of the Air Force is the public’s guarantee of security.”
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UN runs out of food aid in Gaza
Anti-government campaign spreads
Now, the open letter campaign has spread to other parts of the military.
More than 15,000 people have signed, including paratroopers, armoured corps, navy, special units, cyber and medics. The list goes on.
Dr Ofer Havakuk has served 200 days during this war as a combat doctor, mostly in Gaza, and believes the government is continuing the war to stay in power.
He has also signed an open letter supporting the pilots and accused the prime minister of putting politics first.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the authors of the original letter as ‘bad apples’. Pic: AP
He said Mr Netanyahu “wants to keep his coalition working and to keep the coalition together. For him, this is the main purpose of the war”.
A ceasefire could lead to the collapse of the prime minister’s fragile far-right coalition, which is opposed to ending the war.
Threat of dismissal
The Israeli military has threatened to dismiss those who have signed protest letters.
We met a former pilot who is still an active reservist. He didn’t want to be identified and is worried he could lose his job.
“This is a price that I’m willing to pay, although it is very big for me because I’m volunteering and, as a volunteer, I want to stay on duty for as long as I can,” he told us.
The controversy over the war and the hostages is gaining momentum inside Israel’s military.
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It is also exposing deep divisions in society at a time when there is no clear sign about how the government plans to end the war in Gaza, or when.
The renewed war in Gaza over the last year and a half followed deadly Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw around 250 taken hostage.
More than 51,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the Israeli military’s response, many of them civilians, according to the enclave’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health.
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