Hussam Abu Safiya
حسام أبو صفية
Pediatrician and director of Kamal Adwan Hospital · c. 1973– · Kamal Adwan Hospital, Beit Lahia, northern Gaza
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was detained when Israeli forces raided and shut down Kamal Adwan Hospital — the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza — and has been held without charge or trial under Israel's 'unlawful combatant' law ever since.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician and neonatologist, directed Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza, through an 80-day Israeli siege in late 2024, recording video appeals that made him one of the most visible doctors of the war. He continued working after his 15-year-old son Ibrahim was killed in an Israeli drone strike in October 2024, and after he was himself wounded in a separate drone attack on the hospital.
In the early hours of December 27, 2024, Israeli forces raided the hospital. Summoned by a quadcopter’s loudspeaker, Abu Safiya walked through the rubble in his white coat toward an Israeli tank — a photograph that became an enduring image of the war. Troops forced the hospital’s roughly 350 patients, staff and their families out, shut the facility down, and detained Abu Safiya and other medical staff. The military alleged the hospital was a Hamas stronghold, a claim the hospital denied.
Abu Safiya was taken first to the Sde Teiman detention camp and has since been moved between Israeli prisons, held without charge or trial under Israel’s “unlawful combatant” law. The WHO’s director-general, UN special rapporteurs, Physicians for Human Rights Israel and governments including Slovenia have called for his release; lawyers visiting him have documented injuries, shackling and serious health deterioration, and in June 2026 Israel’s Supreme Court weighed his challenge to the continued detention, AP reported.
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UN experts, the WHO and Physicians for Human Rights Israel have demanded his release amid reports of torture and deteriorating health; his detention without charge has been challenged before Israel's Supreme Court.