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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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Italy’s Foreign Minister Heads to Syria to Encourage Post-Assad Transition

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani speaks to the media a he arrives for a meeting at Rome’s Villa Madama, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 on the situation in Syria after the collapse of the Assad regime. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini (Andrew Medichini/AP POOL)
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani speaks to the media a he arrives for a meeting at Rome’s Villa Madama, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 on the situation in Syria after the collapse of the Assad regime. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini (Andrew Medichini/AP POOL)
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Italy’s Foreign Minister Heads to Syria to Encourage Post-Assad Transition

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani speaks to the media a he arrives for a meeting at Rome’s Villa Madama, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 on the situation in Syria after the collapse of the Assad regime. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini (Andrew Medichini/AP POOL)
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani speaks to the media a he arrives for a meeting at Rome’s Villa Madama, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 on the situation in Syria after the collapse of the Assad regime. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini (Andrew Medichini/AP POOL)

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said he would travel to Syria on Friday to encourage the country's transition following the ouster of President Bashar Assad by insurgents, and appealed on Europe to review its sanctions on Damascus now that the political situation has changed.
Tajani presided over a meeting in Rome on Thursday of foreign ministry officials from five countries, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the United States.
The aim, he said, is to coordinate the various post-Assad initiatives, with Italy prepared to make proposals on private investments in health care for the Syrian population.
Going into the meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their European counterparts, Tajani said it was critical that all Syrians be recognized with equal rights. It was a reference to concerns about the rights of Christians and other minorities under Syria’s new de facto authorities of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HT.
“The first messages from Damascus have been positive. That’s why I’m going there tomorrow, to encourage this new phase that will help stabilize the international situation,” Tajani said.
Speaking to reporters, he said the European Union should discuss possible changes to its sanctions on Syria. “It’s an issue that should be discussed because Assad isn’t there anymore, it’s a new situation, and I think that the encouraging signals that are arriving should be further encouraged,” he said.
Syria has been under deeply isolating sanctions by the US, the European Union and others for years as a result of Assad’s brutal response to what began as peaceful anti-government protests in 2011 and spiraled into civil war.
HTS led a lightning insurgency that ousted Assad on Dec. 8 and ended his family’s decades-long rule. From 2011 until Assad’s downfall, Syria’s uprising and civil war killed an estimated 500,000 people.
The US has gradually lifted some penalties since Assad departed Syria for protection in Russia. The Biden administration in December decided to drop a $10 million bounty it had offered for the capture of a Syrian opposition leader whose forces led the ouster of Assad last month.
Syria’s new leaders also have been urged to respect the rights of minorities and women. Many Syrian Christians, who made up 10% of the population before Syria’s civil war, either fled the country or supported Assad out of fear of insurgents.