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Gaza Hospital Director’s Family Pleads for His Release

Ambulances transport wounded Palestinians from the Kamal Adwan Hospital to the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, on December 28, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)
Ambulances transport wounded Palestinians from the Kamal Adwan Hospital to the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, on December 28, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)
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Gaza Hospital Director’s Family Pleads for His Release

Ambulances transport wounded Palestinians from the Kamal Adwan Hospital to the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, on December 28, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)
Ambulances transport wounded Palestinians from the Kamal Adwan Hospital to the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, on December 28, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas group. (AFP)

The family of a hospital director in northern Gaza is pleading with the international community and the Israeli military for his release, after soldiers detained Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya over the weekend.

Abu Safiya's family says he's being denied medical care and kept in the freezing cold in Sde Teiman, an Israeli detention center that been sharply criticized for its inhuman conditions.

Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said Abu Safiya “is currently being questioned regarding his potential involvement in terrorist activity.”

Over the weekend, Israeli soldiers expelled staff and patients from Kamal Adwan Hospital, where it detained 240 people who it said were militants and took them for interrogation in Israel. The military said some fighters attempted to pose as patients and hid in ambulances, without providing evidence.

Israel alleged that Hamas had been using the facility, which hospital officials have denied.

Israel’s latest military offensive in northern Gaza has largely isolated the area, with little medical or other aid allowed to reach hospitals there.

On Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Israeli operations have “obliterated the health care system in northern Gaza,” noting that Kamal Adwan and Indonesian hospitals are now “completely inoperable.”

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US Troops Need to Stay in Syria to Counter ISIS, Austin Says

FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
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US Troops Need to Stay in Syria to Counter ISIS, Austin Says

FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
FILE - US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin makes a speech at Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

The US needs to keep troops deployed in Syria to prevent the ISIS group from reconstituting as a major threat following the ouster of Bashar Assad's government, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told The Associated Press.
American forces are still needed there, particularly to ensure the security of detention camps holding tens of thousands of former ISIS fighters and family members, Austin said Wednesday in one of his final interviews before he leaves office.
According to estimates, there are as many as 8,000-10,000 ISIS fighters in the camps, and at least 2,000 of them are considered to be very dangerous.
If Syria is left unprotected, “I think ISIS fighters would enter back into the mainstream,” Austin said at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he traveled to discuss military aid for Ukraine with about 50 partner nations.
“I think that we still have some work to do in terms of keeping a foot on the throat of ISIS," he said.
President-elect Donald Trump tried to withdraw all forces from Syria in 2018 during his first term, which prompted the resignation of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. As the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, advanced against Assad last month, Trump posted on social media that the US military needed to stay out of the conflict.
The US has about 2,000 troops in Syria to counter ISIS, up significantly from the 900 forces that officials said for years was the total number there. They were sent in 2015 after the militant group had conquered a large swath of Syria.
The continued presence of US troops was put into question after a lightning insurgency ousted Assad on Dec. 8, ending his family’s decades long rule.
US forces have worked with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces on operations against ISIS, providing cover for the group that Türkiye considers an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which it identifies as a terror organization.
The Syrian transitional government is still taking shape, and uncertainty remains on what that will mean going forward.
The SDF “have been good partners. At some point, the SDF may very well be absorbed into the Syrian military and then Syria would own all the (ISIS detention) camps and hopefully keep control of them,” Austin said. "But for now I think we have to protect our interests there.”