Israeli forces arrest hospital director and staff after raiding the last functioning hospital in Gaza.

CNN - Israel arrested a hospital director in a raid that closed the last major functioning health facility in northern Gaza, with its forces also accused of ordering patients to strip in the streets.

Kamal Adwan Hospital is “now empty” after the remaining patients – some of them critically ill – along with caregivers and health workers were transferred to the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, the World Health Organization said.

The facility has come under frequent Israeli fire in recent months and its closure exacerbates a dire humanitarian situation in northern Gaza.

The whereabouts of Kamal Adwan’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, and other staff are unclear, friends and colleagues say.

“We do not know the fate of Dr. Hussam. He was actually threatened by the army as soon as they arrived at the hospital,” a nurse from Kamal Adwan Hospital, Rawiya Al Batsh, told CNN.

The Israeli military acknowledged Saturday it had detained Dr. Abu Safiya, saying he was “suspected of being a Hamas terrorist operative.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it raided the area of the hospital and detained at least 240 “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists,” alleging the facility was being used as a “Hamas terror stronghold.”

Israeli forces launched a renewed aerial and ground incursion in several parts of northern Gaza in early October this year, saying they were targeting a resurgent Hamas presence there. The onslaught has razed streets to carpets of debris, killed entire families, and severely depleted food, water and medical stocks.

On Friday, Dr. Safiya said in a post on social media that Israeli forces were besieging the facility, “and issuing orders for its evacuation.” Multiple nurses have said staff and patients were then ordered to leave the hospital and gather outside.

Once outside, staff and patients were separated by gender and both men and women were told to remove their clothes, two nurses told CNN. “Those who refused to remove their clothing were beaten,” Shorouq Saleh Al-Rantisi, a nurse working in the laboratory, said on Friday.

After hours of being held, they were forced to move to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, the staff said, a facility the WHO has described as “destroyed and nonfunctional.”

Some patients said they asked to be transferred to the Indonesian Hospital, but were not allowed.

“They told us to sit down. After gathering everyone, they made us strip down to our underwear in the cold,” Abdulrahman Rayan told CNN, adding that a significant number of people were detained and injured patients were beaten.

“There was no limit to the beating. They struck people on the head with hoses. They dragged three people at a time, including an injured person with a cast, and beat them on their heads,” added Rayan. “They spared no one – not the injured, not the elderly, not the children.”

Other patients were allegedly made to walk hours on foot to a school in northern Gaza, alongside medical staff. “They made us strip down to our underwear. It was a tough situation, and they assaulted the wounded and women,” Abu Mahmoud Al-Attawi, an injured patient, told CNN on Friday.