Israel turns Gaza’s largest functioning hospital into ‘military base’; detain doctors, medical staff; many patients dead

News Network

February 18, 2024

Amid the ongoing genocidal Israeli war against the Gaza Strip, the regime's forces have reportedly turned the largest functioning hospital in the coastal sliver into a "military base" besides detaining doctors and medical staff.

"Occupation forces detained a large number of medical staff members inside Nasser Medical Complex, which they (the forces) turned into a military base," Gaza's health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said on Saturday.

The troops raided the hospital, which is located in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, on Thursday, attacking hundreds of displaced Palestinians, who were seeking shelter inside the facility from the ravages of the Israeli military campaign.

Israel’s incursion into hospital has led to the deaths of many patients after electricity was severed and oxygen supplies cut, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

The Israeli military has claimed that it was hunting for Palestinian fighters inside the hospital, and had so far arrested 100 suspects.

The military has been using the claim to attack and lay sieges on Gaza's hospitals ever since October 7, 2023, when it began the war against the territory in response to an operation staged by its resistance movements.

Nearly 29,000 Palestinians, mostly women, children, and adolescents, have died so far as a result of the brutal military onslaught.

Also on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to carry out a ground invasion against the nearby southern Gaza city of Rafah, which is packed with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees.

Netanyahu said critics calling for the regime not to mount military action against the city were effectively telling Tel Aviv to "lose the war."

Last week, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to evacuate civilians from Rafah ahead of a planned ground operation.

The city has come to host some 1.5 million Palestinians, who have fled there from the warfare.

Aid organizations say Rafah's evacuation will be nearly impossible, given the scale of devastation elsewhere in Gaza and the huge number of people who have been trapped in the besieged area.

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UN condemns Israeli regime’s ‘organized torture’ against Palestinians

News Network

November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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