Gaza hospital director says his son was killed in Israeli shelling
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The director of a besieged hospital in northern Gaza said that his 21-year-old son was killed by Israeli shelling on the facility on Saturday.
Ibrahim, the son of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, was killed at the entrance of the Kamal Adwan Hospital when he was approaching to see if the Israeli army had withdrawn, his father said.
His son was volunteering to help treat the wounded after a shortage in medical staff at the hospital, Abu Safiya said.
“He was with me around the clock in the intensive care unit and other departments,” he added.
The hospital has been besieged by the Israeli military, which has alleged that “terrorists” were present in the area. The facility was subject to a series of raids on Friday where Abu Safiya said he was detained and interrogated by the Israel Defense Forces over unidentified wounded patients being treated in the hospital.
“The soldier beat me and insulted me in front of the medical staff,” the doctor alleged.
The hospital director said that, along with an assistant, he’s the last remaining doctor in the hospital. Several patients require surgeries but without a team, the overwhelmed doctor does not “know what to do.”
“It’s just me and one assistant, and I am overwhelmed by cases that mostly involve amputations and burns,” he said.
Analysis: The US is urging an end to direct Israel-Iran fire. Experts say it's too soon to tell
After Israel’s attack on Iran Saturday, US officials were quick to caution both countries against perpetuating the cycle of violence, but analysts say lasting de-escalation is not a foregone conclusion.
Iran appeared to have downplayed the Israeli strike, Iranian experts said. State media broadcast images showing calm on the streets of Tehran, with traffic moving and people going about their daily business.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, DC, said Iran’s downplayed response may be “more reflective of their desire to de-escalate than a true assessment of the damage Israel inflicted on Iran,” like Israel’s attempts to hide damage caused by Iran’s October 1 attack.
“The ball is now in the Iranian leadership’s court,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a research fellow with the Iran Program at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and a retired Israel Defense Intelligence officer who specialized in Iran.
However, “Iran will not be deterred from escalating in the future if it so sees fit, neither would Israel,” H.A. Hellyer, scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London, told Paula Newton, adding that deterrence is often used as an excuse by the attacking state, but only leads to more regional instability.
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