The Israeli army stormed the Turkish government hospital in the city of Tubas in the northern occupied West Bank on Tuesday afternoon and arrested a number of doctors, including the hospital director.
The attack came after Israeli warplanes killed two Palestinians, Karam Abu Arra and Muhammad Ghannam, and wounded a third, when their vehicle was targeted near the town of Aqaba, north of the city.
Bystanders and ambulances were able to pull the bodies of the deceased from inside the vehicle and transport them with the wounded person to the Turkish hospital. But the Israeli army later stormed it in an attempt to confiscate the bodies and arrest the wounded.
Dr Mahmoud Ghannam, head of the emergency department at the hospital, told Middle East Eye that he received the wounded person and treated him, but everyone was shocked when the Israeli army stormed the hospital and besieged it amid a state of panic among members of the public who were near and inside it.
Ghannam was unable to leave the department due to heavy gunfire from the soldiers, who smashed the windows of the emergency department and stormed it in “a barbaric manner”, he said.
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“Then they arrested me, tied me up, and took me in a humiliating way to the military vehicle outside,” he told MEE.
“They asked me to contact the hospital administration to hand over the bodies. Then they summoned the hospital director and left us.”
Muhammad Samara, the general director of the hospital, told MEE that the soldiers tied him up, lowered him to the ground, hit him on the side, and insulted him. Then they ordered him to hand over the bodies to them, but he refused.
“They continued to insult me and threaten to shoot me, but I told them that it was the Ministry of Health’s decision and not mine to hand them the bodies. They continued to verbally assault me, then the officer asked me to take the bodies out to the hospital yard, but I refused,” he said.
Samara was eventually released.
Patients ‘terrorised’
Samara said that during the storming of the hospital, the windows of the first floor were smashed, including the reception section and doors, and live bullets and sound bombs were fired in the hospital corridors.
“One of the soldiers also got into the elevator and fired bullets randomly, terrorising the patients,” he said.
The soldiers opened fire on the citizens gathered in the hospital courtyard, wounding one of them. They were prepared to fire on anyone moving inside the hospital corridors, Samara added.
Jumana Daraghmeh was accompanying her mother in the dialysis department when she heard the sounds of intense sound bombs being fired inside the hospital.
She was terrified and went out to see what happened, and found dozens of soldiers in the corridors chasing people and patients and spreading fear among them, she said.
“The soldiers were merciless and caused a lot of panic for the elderly and sick. The raid lasted for more than half an hour and was terrible. I saw snipers too inside the hospital,” she told MEE.
The Israeli army withdrew from the hospital and its surroundings about 45 minutes after storming it, leaving material damage and people injured from suffocation and fear.
Immediately after the withdrawal, the people of the city were able to hold a funeral for the deceased and avoid any new Israeli attempt to confiscate them.
