Israel detains director of one of northern Gaza's last functioning hospitals, Palestinians say
Deir al-Balah, Dec 28: Israel's army detained the director of one of northern Gaza's last functioning hospitals as overnight strikes in the territory killed nine people, including children, Palestinian medical officials said Saturday.
Gaza's Health Ministry said Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was arrested by Israeli forces Friday along with dozens of other staff and taken to an interrogation centre. The ministry said Israeli troops stormed the hospital and forced many staff and patients outside and told them to strip in winter weather, according to the ministry.
Israel's army didn't respond to questions about the director. On Friday, it denied it had entered or set fire to the hospital complex but acknowledged it had ordered people outside, and said it was conducting operations against Hamas infrastructure and its members in the area.
The military repeated claims that Hamas group operate inside Kamal Adwan but provided no evidence. Hospital officials have denied that.
The hospital has been hit multiple times over the past three months by Israeli troops waging an offensive in largely isolated northern Gaza against Hamas fighters it says have regrouped. The health ministry said a strike on the hospital earlier this week killed five medical personnel.
MedGlobal, the humanitarian organisation for which Abu Safiya worked, said Friday it was gravely concerned about him. It said the incident follows the October detention of five other staff, calling it an “alarming and egregious pattern of targeting medical personnel and spaces.”
Israel's nearly 15-month-old campaign of bombardment and ground offensives has devastated Gaza's health sector. The World Health Organisation has said the raid on Kamal Adwan has put northern Gaza's last major health facility “out of service" after growing restrictions on access, adding that “this horror must end and health care must be protected.”
The Health Ministry said conditions for Kamal Adwan patients who were relocated to the damaged Indonesian Hospital nearby — also raided in the past — were “extremely difficult.”
The war has killed more than 45,400 Palestinians, over half of them women and children, and wounded more than 108,000 others, according to the Health Ministry. Its count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Since October, Israel's offensive has virtually sealed off the northern Gaza areas of Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and leveled large parts of them. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were forced out but thousands are believed to remain in the area where Kamal Adwan and two other hospitals are located.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after the groups Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel in which they killed around 1,200 people and abducted some 250 others. Some 100 Israelis remain captive in Gaza, around a third believed to be dead.
Israel continued attacks across Gaza on Saturday. An overnight strike killed at least nine people in Maghazi, including women and children, according to staff at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital where they were taken and an Associated Press reporter who saw the bodies.
Men cried as the bodies, wrapped in bloodied white plastic, lay on the floor of the morgue.
The Health Ministry said Saturday that 48 people had been killed in the past 24 hours by Israeli fire.
Meanwhile, Israel said its troops had begun operating in the northern city of Beit Hanoun, citing intelligence that fighters and Hamas infrastructure were in the area.
Strikes also continued in Israel. Air raid sirens sounded early Saturday and the military said it intercepted a missile fired by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Israeli warplanes bombed key infrastructure in Yemen again on Thursday. The Houthis also have been attacking shipping in the Red Sea and say they won't stop until Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza.
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Over 60 passengers dead, two crew rescued in fiery South Korea airliner crash
Seoul (AP/PTI): A passenger plane burst into flames Sunday after it skid off a runway at a South Korean airport and slammed into a concrete fence when its front landing gear apparently failed to deploy, killing at least 62 people, officials said, in one of the country's worst aviation disasters.
The National Fire Agency said the fire was almost put out but officials were still trying to pull people from the Jeju Air passenger plane carrying 181 people at the airport in the town of Muan, about 290 kilometers (180 miles) south of Seoul.
At least 62 people — 37 women and 25 men — had died in the fire, the agency said. Emergency workers pulled out two people — one passenger and one crew member. It said it deployed 32 fire trucks and several helicopters to contain the fire.
Footage of the crash aired by YTN television showed the Jeju Air plane skidding across the airstrip, apparently with its landing gear still closed, and colliding head-on with a concrete wall on the outskirts of the facility. The transport ministry said the incident happened at 9:03 a.m. local time.
Local TV stations aired footage showing thick pillows of black smoke billowing from the plane engulfed with flame.
Emergency officials in Muan said they were examining the cause of the fire. They said the plane's landing gear appeared to have malfunctioned. The transport ministry said the plane was returning from Bangkok and its passengers include two Thai nationals.
Thailand's prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, expressed deep condolences to the families of those affected by the accident through a post on social platform X. Paetongtarn said she had ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide assistance immediately.
It's one of the deadliest disasters in South Korea's aviation history. The last time South Korea suffered a large-scale air disaster was in 1997, when an Korean Airline plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board.
The incident came as South Korea is embroiled into a huge political crisis triggered by President Yoon Suk Yeol's stunning imposition of martial law and ensuing impeachment. Last Friday, South Korean lawmakers impeached acting President Han Duck-soo and suspended his duties, making Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok to take over.
Choi ordered officials to employ all available resources to rescue the passengers and crew before he headed to Muan. Yoon's office said his chief secretary, Chung Jin-suk, will preside over an emergency meeting between senior presidential staff later on Sunday to discuss the crash.
