ISRAEL has confirmed it is holding Gaza hospital director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya after earlier telling a local NGO that it was unaware of his case.
Dr Abu Safiya was arrested as the Israeli military forced patients and medical staff to leave Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza last Friday, alleging the facility was a "Hamas terrorist stronghold".
On Thursday the Israel Defense Forces told Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) that it had "no indication of the arrest or detention of the individual in question".
But in a statement on Friday, the Israel Defense Forces said he was “currently being investigated by Israeli security forces” in person.
The statement did not offer an explanation for the confusion but repeated that he was suspected of being a "terrorist" and for "holding a rank" in Hamas.
The PHRI filed a petition with the Israeli High Court of Justice on Thursday, demanding Dr Abu Safiya's location be disclosed. It said the court had given the IDF a week to comply.
Meanwhile Amnesty head Agnès Callamard said Israeli authorities must "urgently disclose his whereabouts".
She said Israel had detained "hundreds of Palestinian healthcare workers from Gaza without charge or trial" and said they had been "subjected to torture and other ill-treatment and been held in incommunicado detention".
Dr Abu Safiya's family previously told BBC Arabic they believe he is being held at Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel, where Israeli forces have taken many detainees from Gaza for interrogation.
The IDF ordered everyone inside Kamal Adwan hospital to leave last Friday morning.
The UN said the area of Beit Lahia, where the hospital is located, has been under "near-total siege" as the Israeli military heavily restricts access of aid deliveries to an area where an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people remain.
On Saturday, the IDF said it apprehended 240 combatants at Kamal Adwan and said Dr Abu Safiya was among medical staff taken for questioning.
Dr Abu Safiya was previously arrested by Israeli forces during an earlier raid on the hospital in October, but was freed shortly afterwards. During that Israeli operation Dr Abu Safiya's 15-year-old son was killed in a drone strike.
On Tuesday the UN Human Rights Office said Israeli attacks on and around hospitals have pushed Gaza's healthcare system to "the brink of total collapse" and raised serious concerns about war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In the past 24 hours, more than 70 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, according to health officials.
Strikes occurred in the seaside humanitarian zone known as Muwasi as hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have been huddling there in damp winter weather.
The early morning strike killed at least 10 people, including three children and two senior Hamas police officers.
Another Israeli strike killed at least eight people in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
Three Palestinians were also killed in an Israeli strike that hit a group of people walking in the street in Maghazi in central Gaza.
Later on Thursday and early on Friday, Israeli strikes in central Gaza, including Maghazi and the Nuseirat refugee camp, killed at least 24 people, including children, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
