PARIS: About 50 people, including doctors, trade unionists and pro-Palestinian activists, gathered outside France’s foreign ministry in Paris on Thursday to call for the release of a Gaza hospital director who has been held since December 2024.
“Free Dr. Abu Safiya,” chanted the demonstrators at the protest organized by hospital unions, among them Patrick Pelloux, the high-profile head France’s emergency doctor association.
It is the latest call for the release of Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician and director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital, who has reportedly suffered torture and life-threatening injuries in detention.
United Nations experts, the World Health Organization and Amnesty International have urged Israel to set him free.
Israel has said his detention is “lawful” and rejected reports that he suffered a life-threatening condition.
Abu Safiya rose to prominence in 2024 by posting about the dire conditions in his besieged hospital in Beit Lahia during a major Israeli offensive.
On December 27 that year, Israeli forces assaulted the facility, labelling the only functioning hospital in northern Gaza at the time a Hamas “terrorist center,” and arresting dozens of medical staff including Abu Safiya.
The demonstrators want a non-political medical delegation to be sent to assess Abu Safiya’s “state of health” and prevent “his arbitrary detention from becoming a death sentence,” said Cyrille Venet, former general-secretary of the SNMH-FO union.
In October, a ceasefire was reached in Gaza between Israel and Hamas following two years of war, which was sparked by the Palestinian militants’ unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
