West Bank: Israeli army violently storms Turkish hospital and detains doctors
Shattered glass after a raid by Israeli soldiers, Turkish hospital in Tubas, occupied West Bank, 3 December 2024
Mohammed Atiq and Fayha Shalash report in Middle East Eye on 3 December 2024
The Israeli army stormed the Turkish government hospital in the city of Tubas in the northern occupied West Bank on Tuesday afternoon and arrested a number of doctors, including the hospital director.
The attack came after Israeli warplanes killed two Palestinians, Karam Abu Arra and Muhammad Ghannam, and wounded a third, when their vehicle was targeted near the town of Aqaba, north of the city.
Bystanders and ambulances were able to pull the bodies of the deceased from inside the vehicle and transport them with the wounded person to the Turkish hospital. But the Israeli army later stormed it in an attempt to confiscate the bodies and arrest the wounded.
Dr Mahmoud Ghannam, head of the emergency department at the hospital, told Middle East Eye that he received the wounded person and treated him, but everyone was shocked when the Israeli army stormed the hospital and besieged it amid a state of panic among members of the public who were near and inside it.
Ghannam was unable to leave the department due to heavy gunfire from the soldiers, who smashed the windows of the emergency department and stormed it in “a barbaric manner”, he said.
“Then they arrested me, tied me up, and took me in a humiliating way to the military vehicle outside,” he told MEE. “They asked me to contact the hospital administration to hand over the bodies. Then they summoned the hospital director and left us.”
Muhammad Samara, the general director of the hospital, told MEE that the soldiers tied him up, lowered him to the ground, hit him on the side, and insulted him. Then they ordered him to hand over the bodies to them, but he refused.