'The way to hell'

Palestinian doctors accuse Israeli soldiers of abuse and torture at military detention centre. Bel Trew reports

- Bel Trew

Palestinian doctors working in Gaza have accused Israeli forces of using electric shocks, turning medics into human shields and repeatedly torturing them after being arrested without charge.

Dr Khaled Al-Serr, a surgeon at Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said the Israeli military raided the facility on two different occasions, arresting dozens of medical workers as they treated injured Palestinians.

He alleged that when he was detained in March last year, he was stripped naked alongside four others and forced to act as a human shield before being taken to Sde Teiman military detention centre in southern Israel.

There, he said he was coerced into making confessions while handcuffed for three months even while asleep, beaten so badly his ribs broke, and interrogated about the hospital.

His account comes as the UN said on Monday that Israel killed 15 more medical and emergency workers as they attempted to rescue the injured from the southern city of Rafah.

More than 250 Palestinian medics – including doctors, nurses and paramedics – are believed to have been held in Israel since the war in Gaza erupted in October 2023, according to human rights’ group Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), who claim 180 are still behind bars “without due process or clarity”.

In October, an UN independent commission concluded that Israel has perpetrated “a concerted policy” to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system, with “relentless and deliberate attacks” on medical personnel and facilities amounting to war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination.

The Israeli military has repeatedly denied accusations of abusing and targeting medics and accused Hamas militants of using hospitals in Gaza as bases, despite providing scant evidence of such a serious charge.