IDF confirms senior Gazan doctor died in Israeli prison
Adnan Al-Bursh, head of orthopedics at Shifa, was detained over four months ago in northern Gaza and held in an Israeli prison for national security reasons
A Gazan doctor died in an Israeli prison after more than four months in detention, two Palestinian prisoner associations claimed on Thursday, blaming Israel for his death.
The associations said in a joint statement that Adnan Al-Bursh, head of orthopedics at Shifa Hospital in Gaza, had been detained by Israeli forces while temporarily working at Al-Awda Hospital in north Gaza.
They called his death an “assassination” and said his body remained in Israeli custody.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said that the prison service had declared Bursh dead on April 19, saying that he had been detained for national security reasons in Ofer prison. The IDF has offered no further information at this time.
The Palestinian Authority’s health ministry said in a statement that Bursh’s death raised to 496 the number of medical sector workers who had been killed by Israel since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct 7. It added that 1,500 others had been wounded while 309 had been arrested.
Israel maintains that Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes and its operations against them have been justified by the presence of terrorists.
The Shifa hospital was the scene of two separate IDF raids as the military sought to capture terrorists who were using the hospital as a headquarters and a staging ground for attacks. Hostages were also kept in the hospital.
In March, the military launched a second raid on the hospital after thousands of terrorists regrouped there after an initial IDF withdrawal.
During the raid, which began March 18, the IDF said troops captured some 900 suspects, of whom more than 500 were confirmed to be terror operatives, and killed more than 200 gunmen. Among those killed and detained were top commanders in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Valuable intelligence was also seized, the IDF said.
Earlier on Thursday, Israel released 64 Palestinians they had detained in Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing, the Hamas-run borders and crossings agency said.
Some UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) staff released from Israeli prisons in the past months have reported ill-treatment during detention, including deprivation of food and sleep.
The two new deaths bring the toll of Gazans who died in Israeli custody to at least 18 since the start of the war, the prisoners’ associations said, urging Israel to disclose the number, location and fate of detainees from Gaza.
Gazan detainees found to have no links to the terror groups are routinely returned to the Strip.
UNRWA says it has documented the release of 1,506 people detained by Israel through the Kerem Shalom crossing as of April 4. The 1,506 included 43 children and 84 women, it said.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, in which some 1,200 were murdered in Israel, mostly civilians, and 253 were kidnapped into Gaza amid rampant sexual violence and acts of horrific brutality.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 34,000 people in the Strip have been killed in the fighting so far, a figure that cannot be independently verified and includes some 13,000 Hamas gunmen Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
More than 260 IDF soldiers have been killed in the Gaza offensive.
