Prominent Gaza doctor tortured and killed in Israeli prison

JERUSALEM: A senior Palestinian doctor died in an Israeli prison after more than four months of detention, two Palestinian prisoner associations said on Thursday, blaming Israel for his death.

The associations said in a joint statement that Adnan Al-Bursh, head of orthopedics at Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, had been detained by Israeli forces in December while temporarily working at Al-Awada Hospital in north Gaza.

They called his death a “deliberate assassination” and said his body remained in Israeli custody. Bursh, died in the Israel-controlled Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank on 19 April, according to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee.

An Israeli military spokesperson said that the prison service had declared Bursh dead on April 19, saying that he had been detained for national security reasons in Ofer prison. The spokesperson did not comment on the cause of death.

Another detainee, Ismail Abdul Bari Khader, 33, also died in custody, and his body was handed over on 2 May along with 64 other prisoners.  “The two victims died of torture and crimes committed against Gazan detainees,” the statement said.

Bursh, aged 50, was the head of orthopaedic medicine at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and had been arrested in December, around the same time that he had reportedly been wounded by Israeli bombardment at the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza.

Bursh regularly travelled around to different hospitals in the Gaza Strip to tend to patients, and at the time of his arrest, he was working at al-Awda hospital. Several medical staff and patients were also arrested alongside Bursh.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories, said today that she was “extremely alarmed” at the death of the prominent doctor.

“I urge the diplomatic community to intervene with concrete measures to protect Palestinians. No Palestinian is safe under Israel’s occupation today,” she wrote in a statement on X.

Medical groups, including the World Health Organization, have repeatedly called for a halt to attacks on Gaza healthcare workers, with more than 200 killed so far in the Gaza conflict.

The Palestinian health ministry said in a statement that Bursh’s death raised to 496 the number of medical sector workers who had been killed by Israel since Oct 7. It added that 1,500 others had been wounded while 309 had been arrested.

Dozens of Palestinians who had been freed by Israel in past months including some staff of a UN agency have reported ill-treatment during detention, including torture and deprivation of food and sleep.

The two new deaths bring the toll of Gazans who died in Israeli custody to at least 18 since the start of the war, the prisoners associations said, urging Israeli authorities to disclose the number, location and fate of detainees from Gaza.

The UN. Palestinian Refugee Agency has documented the release of 1,506 people detained by the Israeli authorities through the Kerem Shalom crossing as of April 4 and said the transfer of detainees regularly holds up aid. The 1,506 included 43 children and 84 women, it said.