Israeli army destroys hospitals and targets medical workers in Gaza, doctors and nurses there say

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military is destroying medical facilities in Gaza and weakening the health care system there, 14 doctors and two nurses told NBC News. All said the campaign includes detaining and killing medical workers at their workplaces and in their homes.

The Israeli army defends its actions by claiming that medical facilities in Gaza are being used as a base for Hamas. In any case, the scenes are horrifying.

A photo shared with NBC News shows Israeli soldiers with guns drawn inside Al Khair Hospital as people stand with their hands up. Nearby, at Nasser Hospital, video shows a tank driving through the streets and the sound of automatic gunfire as the Israeli army stormed the complex on Feb. 14, filling the facility’s hallways with smoke, rubble and chaos.

“They attacked the orthopedic department, killing and wounding patients there,” said plastic surgeon Dr. Ahmed Almoghrabi, who witnessed the raid. He has since fled Gaza to Egypt, driven by fears for his children.

“I only had two options. Either they kill us or they hold us, and both options are very bad,” he told NBC News.

Most of his colleagues who were in the hospital were now in prison, he said. Others, such as reconstructive surgeon Dr. Ahmad Maqadmeh, were killed in the Al-Shifa complex, he said.

Some, Almoghrabi said, were attacked in their homes. He pointed to the case of Dr. Hammam Alloh, the enclave’s only kidney specialist, who he said was “killed within half an hour of returning home.” He added that Dr. Medhat Saidam, a senior plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Al-Shifa Hospital, was killed in an attack on his family home about 30 minutes after he returned home with his sister.

The 16 health care workers interviewed by NBC News all said they believed the Israeli military deliberately attacked medical facilities and targeted doctors.

At least 50 specialized doctors, including some of Gaza’s most senior physicians, have been killed since Israel launched its offensive following the October 7 Hamas terror attacks and hostage-taking, according to a July 4 list provided by the Gaza Health Ministry and interviews with NBC News. As of June, at least 20 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals had been destroyed or rendered inoperable, the World Health Organization said.

The Israeli military has repeatedly stated that medical facilities in Gaza are used as a base for Hamas, as a warehouse for weapons and as shelters for staff who want to hide among the civilian population living there. This charge is denied by Hamas and health officials in the enclave.

In a statement to NBC News, the Israel Defense Forces said that “a regrettable outcome of Hamas’ exploitation of hospitals” was also the “involvement of medical personnel, including doctors, directly in Hamas’ terror activities.” It did not respond to a question about whether it targeted doctors in their homes.

None of the doctors NBC News spoke to said they had seen Hamas militants or witnessed terrorist activity inside the hospital’s walls. Palestinian health officials and Hamas have repeatedly denied that the militant group has used medical facilities as operational hubs.

In a grim ritual, the doctors have been keeping track of the deaths and disappearances in a WhatsApp group. It originally started two years ago for doctors to share information. But now, after more than nine months of war in Gaza, it has become a forum to share news about medical professionals and photos and videos of hospitals under attack.

Among them is Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah. A new message in the medical WhatsApp group could mean the death of another colleague or friend.

“Every time you get a message from this group, your heart sinks and you think, ‘There’s bad news again,’” the U.K.-based plastic surgeon told NBC News in an interview last month at his London practice, showing a message revealing the death of one of his friends.

“It has been confirmed that Doctor Ahmed Almaqadma has passed away along with his mother,” the message read.

Abu-Sittah last worked in Gaza in November. He said some of the dead, including plastic surgeon Midhat Saidam, kidney specialist Hammam Alloh and Hani Abu Haythem, the head of the emergency department at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, “were all killed when they got home, less than half an hour after they got home.”

“Perhaps the goal of making Gaza uninhabitable is being achieved here, because the highly qualified, highly educated class, the people who can afford to leave, are leaving,” he said, adding that some of the doctors who came from Gaza were “a shadow of their former selves” and “unable to work anymore.”

Medical workers are also being detained by Israeli forces. According to the WHO, 214 medical workers were detained in May.

Some have died in custody, including renowned orthopedic surgeon Dr. Adnan al Bursh, who told NBC News after a November raid on Al Shifa Hospital that he was determined to stay put “because there are a lot of patients,” including women and children.

He died on April 19 in Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank, according to both the Gaza Ministry of Health and the United Nations human rights office. In a statement, Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN special rapporteur, said his case raised “serious concerns that he died after torture by the Israeli authorities.”

Asked for comment, the Israel Prison Service referred NBC News to the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, which did not respond. The IDF did not respond to a specific question about the nature of his death.

However, in a statement to NBC News on June 18,, The Shin Bet said Dr. Iyad Rantisi, a 53-year-old doctor who headed the obstetrics department at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern city of Beit Lahiya, had died in a “detention center clinic” six days after his arrest on Nov. 11 “on suspicion of his involvement in the holding of Israeli hostages.” It said the circumstances of his death were being investigated.

Two relatives of Dr. Khaled Al Serr, a general surgery specialist, told NBC News in a telephone interview last month that they had not heard from him since March 24. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals and said they did not know whether he was dead or alive.

Human rights group Amnesty International called for his immediate release, saying in a statement last month that he had been held in Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis and then “held in conditions amounting to enforced disappearance”.

NBC News contacted the IDF several times for information on Al Serr’s whereabouts. The responses did not address the issue of his detention, but instead repeated the accusation that Gaza hospitals were being used by Hamas. The Shin Bet did not respond to a request for information.

Some who have been released warn of the terrible conditions behind bars.

After being released without charge from Nafha prison in southern Israel earlier this month, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, said he had seen prisoners being treated horribly. Prisoners were “subjected to physical and psychological humiliation on a daily basis,” he told NBC News’ crew on the ground in Gaza in an on-camera interview.

His comments were echoed by a nurse who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because of fear of repercussions, who said he was moved to three locations during his detention. Prisoners were forced to sit for “18 to 19 hours a day” for more than a month, he said.

His story bears a striking resemblance to footage broadcast on Israeli television in February from a prison camp in southern Israel, showing blindfolded men kneeling in tight rows surrounded by armed guards.

The nurse said they were beaten, verbally abused, denied access to food and toilets, and were regularly questioned about the whereabouts of Israeli hostages and whether medical staff were members of Hamas.

Like Abu Salmiya, the nurse said detainees were not receiving adequate medical care. One prisoner developed gangrene in his right leg and “they amputated his limb below the knee,” he said, adding: “I am sure his family does not know that their son has lost a limb.”

According to Abu-Sittah, the London plastic surgeon, it will probably take years before the specialists are replaced.

“That is a generational loss and it will take a long time before we replace these human resources,” he said, using the example of Dr. Hammam Alloh, who trained as a physician for six years, internal medicine for three years and then as a kidney disease specialist for another six years before being killed in an airstrike in November.

With ceasefire negotiations underway and little sign of the war ending, the number of people needing treatment will only increase.

The doctors’ deaths will only add to the strain on the enclave’s already overstretched health care system. Health officials say more than 1,200 people have been killed and more than 250 taken hostage since Israel launched its military offensive in response to the Hamas-led assault, which, by Israeli counts, has killed 1,200 people.

Even after the fighting ends, it could take up to 14 years for the rubble in the enclave to be cleared after the Israeli offensive ends, according to the United Nations.

“God willing, we will return to work and rebuild Al Shifa Medical Hospital as it was and better,” said the facility’s director, Abu Salmiya.

“And it will be a medical beacon for all of our people.”