Amnesty International slams Israel for ‘terrifying’ violent hospital raids

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Cii Radio| Ayesha Ismail| 27 July 2017| 03 Zhul Qadha 1438

Amnesty International has condemned Israeli forces for multiple violent raids into an occupied East Jerusalem hospital.

Israeli forces stormed Makassed Hospital at least twice over the past week in an attempt to detain protesters they had critically injured during demonstrations against Israel’s increased security measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Israeli police and border police soldiers have been “terrifying staff and patients and in some cases preventing doctors from providing emergency medical care to critically injured patients,” Amnesty International wrote in a statement yesterday.

The conduct of Israeli forces that carried out violent raids on Makassed hospital harassing and intimidating staff and patients is utterly deplorable.

“There can be no justification for preventing medical workers from caring for a critically wounded patient,” the statement quoted Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty’s regional deputy director, as saying.

During raids on 17 and 21 July, armed Israeli forces caused “absolute mayhem” in the hospital, which is located just east of the Old City.

Head of Makassed Hospital, Dr Rafiq Husseini, told Amnesty that on the night of 17 July, between 20 and 30 heavily armed forces “harassed my staff and other patients and were acting in an aggressive manner… They acted without any legal basis, entering the hospital with machine guns and stun grenades and terrorising the staff and other patients.”

While scores of wounded demonstrators poured into the hospital that day, the hospital’s medical director Dr Bassam Abu Libdeh recalled Israeli forces chasing a 19-year-old through the hospital like “hungry dogs after their prey”, as the critically injured young man was “bleeding to death” from a gunshot wound in a thigh artery.

Head of reception at Makassed, Talal Al-Sayed, said the violence he witnessed during the 21 July raid was completely unprecedented.

He described to Amnesty how around 200 heavily armed soldiers broke into the hospital, detaining people and firing tear gas in their path while pursuing a young man with a critical chest wound all the way to the operating theatre. “It was pure terrorisation of the patients,” he said, describing how soldiers shoved and hit a doctor who was trying to care for the injured young man in the operating room.

The young man, Muhammad Abu Ghannam, died of his wounds. One of the nurses on duty at the time was quoted in the statement as saying:I have never been so scared in my life. All I remember were loud sounds and pushing and screaming. It was total chaos… There was blood all over the place on the floor, on the walls.

Shortly after Abu Ghannam succumbed to his injuries, shocking footage emerged showing Palestinians frantically hauling his body, wrapped in a bloodied sheet, over a wall behind the hospital in an attempt to prevent Israeli forces from seizing his remains.

“As the occupying power, Israel has a responsibility to protect Palestinian civilians and must respect their right to peacefully protest. They must ensure that their forces limit their use of force in accordance with international law,” Mughrabi added.

Source – MEMO

Pic Credit – Maan news