Palestinian Health Ministry: Forcing Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital to make statements under threat by the occupation is a war crime

Occupied Al-Quds, (ST) – The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that the Israeli occupation’s forcing the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip to make statements under torture and intimidation and publish them in audio and video is a war crime.

The Ministry said in a statement today that the Israeli occupation has been trying since the beginning of its aggression to destroy the health sector in Gaza Strip, as it bombs and storms hospitals and arrests medical personnel. It indicated that storming into Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip and detaining  its director, Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlot, and intimidating and forcing him to make statements that serve the occupation under torture is considered one chapter of occupation’s ongoing crimes against the health sector.

The Palestinian Health Ministry called on all international human rights institutions to denounce the occupation’s criminal behavior against the Palestinian people in general, especially against medical teams, by forcing them to make statements that contradict the truth and serve the occupation. It stressed that the occupation’s forcing Kahlot to make these statements and publish them in audio and video is a war crime.

The Ministry indicated that this attempt by the occupation falls within the framework of its desperate attempts to justify its successive crimes, especially against the health system, after its failure to fabricate any presence of resistance under the buildings of the Shifa Medical Complex and after the ugly face of the occupation has been exposed through documenting the suffering of premature, sick and wounded children as well as pregnant women to the whole world due to lack of health services.

The Palestinian Health Ministry called on human rights organizations to open an urgent investigation into the massacre committed by the occupation at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where children were besieged without water, food, and electricity for many days, which ended with the bombing of the hospital, the death of two women and two sick children, and the injury of dozens.

This was followed by other inhuman practices by the occupation like, storming into the hospital and arresting dozens of displaced people, patients and the persons of the health sector, the brutal assault on them, the demolition of the hospital, the crushing of the bodies of the martyrs under the chains of tanks, and the exhumation of graves.

Raghda Sawas