The Gaza Strip's health ministry has condemned the death of a Palestinian surgeon by torture during his detention in an Israeli jail, calling for an urgent investigation into the occupying regime’s latest crime.
The ministry appealed in a statement posted on X, after Adnan Ahmad al-Bursh, a Palestinian surgeon and professor of orthopedic medicine, lost his life as a result of torture at the Israeli-run Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank last month.
“The torture and assassination” of Dr. Barash was the latest example of Israel’s “continued violation of international conventions in dealing with the health sector and medical personnel during its aggression against Gaza,” the ministry said.
It further called on international organizations to open an immediate and urgent investigation into Israel’s crime.
The ministry added that 491 medical personnel have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s war on the besieged enclave started nearly seven months ago.
Bursh, the head of orthopedics at al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza, had been detained by Israeli forces with a group of other doctors last December at al-Awda Hospital near the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
Bursh died on April 19. No details were given on the cause of death, and the prison authorities said the incident was being investigated.
Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Committee and the Palestinian Prisoners Club said the 50-year-old Palestinian surgeon died in what has been termed as "deliberate assassination” and “his body is still being held" by the Israeli regime.
Israel waged its brutal war on besieged Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Israeli aggression has so far killed at least 34,622 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and wounded over 77,867 others.