Islam al-Hijazi says prisoners told him that about 20 Israeli guards assaulted the renowned Palestinian surgeon before he was thrown into a cell barely breathing and denied urgent medical assistance.
A released Palestinian detainee has provided new details about the death of Dr Adnan al-Bursh, one of Gaza’s most respected surgeons, alleging that fellow prisoners told him the doctor was subjected to a prolonged beating by Israeli guards shortly before he died at Ofer Prison.
In an interview published by Middle East Eye, Islam al-Hijazi said he was placed in the same room at Ofer where al-Bursh had died several months earlier. The account he provided was relayed to him by prisoners who said they had been present when the surgeon was brought into their section.
Hijazi was reportedly arrested at a hospital in Gaza City while recovering from surgery for a head injury sustained during the war. He was subsequently transferred through several Israeli detention facilities, including the Ofer complex in the occupied West Bank.
“When I got to know the men and began talking to them, one of the prisoners told me, ‘This is the room where Dr Adnan died,’” Hijazi said.
“I was shocked. I asked him, ‘Dr Adnan died?’ He said, ‘Yes, several months ago.’ I moved closer and asked him to tell me exactly what had happened.”
Hijazi’s testimony is therefore not a claim that he personally witnessed the entire assault on al-Bursh. It is an account attributed to prisoners who told him they had seen the doctor’s arrival, treatment and final moments.
“We have been waiting for you”
According to the account relayed by Hijazi, Israeli interrogators questioned al-Bursh about allegations that he had treated captives or prisoners in Gaza.
The surgeon reportedly responded by explaining that his medical obligations applied to every injured person brought before him.
“I am a doctor,” al-Bursh was said to have told his interrogators. “I treat any patient who comes to me. I do not look at their identity or nationality. I look at their injury.”
Hijazi said al-Bursh was tortured during his interrogation. The intelligence officers allegedly later asked the surgeon to meet the families of captives and reassure them about their relatives, a request he reportedly accepted.
When this process ended, al-Bursh was allegedly told that the intelligence services had finished with him and that he would be transferred to Ofer Prison.
Two days later, Hijazi said, a prisoner transport vehicle carried al-Bursh and seven other detainees to the facility.
“When Dr Adnan arrived, one of the guards asked him, ‘Are you the doctor?’ He answered, ‘Yes.’ They told him, ‘We have been waiting for you,’” Hijazi recounted.
Approximately 20 guards then surrounded the surgeon and began beating him, according to the account.
“They beat him using every possible method, with their hands, their feet, batons, boots and electricity,” Hijazi said.
The assault allegedly continued for about half an hour. Prisoners could initially hear al-Bursh calling for help, but his voice gradually weakened and then stopped, while the sound of the beating reportedly continued.
“It appeared that the doctor had lost consciousness, but they continued beating him,” Hijazi said.
Thrown into Section 23 barely breathing
Al-Bursh was later taken to Section 23 of Ofer Prison, where guards allegedly shouted insults at him and ordered him to stand.
“Get up, you dog,” Hijazi quoted them as saying.
The surgeon was by then completely exhausted and struggling to breathe, according to the prisoners’ account. Guards allegedly removed one detainee from a room and threw al-Bursh onto its floor.
“The doctor collapsed on the floor and was barely breathing,” Hijazi said. “His breathing was extremely weak and difficult.”
The prisoners began shouting, banging on the doors and calling for urgent medical assistance. Hijazi said their appeals were initially ignored and that at least one guard mocked, laughed at and insulted them instead of responding.
Al-Bursh was eventually taken outside and connected to a heart monitor, but Hijazi said the doctor had already died.
Senior prison officers, including the prison director, then arrived at the section. Instead of addressing the prisoners’ demands for an explanation, Hijazi alleged that officers threatened them with violent repression and the withdrawal of food if they protested.
One guard allegedly warned the detainees that anyone who pretended to be ill would meet the same fate as “this dog”.
Hijazi said al-Bursh’s body was placed in a white bag and removed. He claimed it was taken to what Palestinians call a “cemetery of numbers”, burial sites where bodies have historically been identified by numbers instead of names.
The precise destination of al-Bursh’s body at that moment has not been independently established. His family nevertheless says Israeli authorities continue to withhold his remains more than two years after his death.
Earlier testimony described similar final moments
Elements of the account relayed by Hijazi resemble testimony previously provided by another detainee to the Israeli human rights organisation HaMoked.
That detainee said al-Bursh arrived at Section 23 in Ofer during April 2024 with injuries across his body and without clothing on the lower half of his body. According to the deposition, guards threw the surgeon into the prison yard, where he was unable to stand. Another prisoner helped him into a room, and detainees began shouting that he had died minutes later.
The account was subsequently reported in a Sky News investigation.
A March 2025 report by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry also documented witness evidence that al-Bursh had been assaulted and stripped below the waist before his death. The commission said his remains were still being withheld and that no independent forensic autopsy had been conducted.
The new testimony differs by alleging that a large group of guards directly beat al-Bursh for approximately 30 minutes immediately after his arrival. That specific account has not been independently verified, and no publicly released forensic findings have established the surgeon’s official cause of death.
Arrested while treating Gaza’s wounded
Al-Bursh, 50, was head of orthopaedics at al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility and a central part of the territory’s healthcare system.
After the war began in October 2023, he worked almost continuously, operating on casualties and sleeping inside the hospital. When Israeli forces ordered the evacuation of al-Shifa, he did not leave northern Gaza. He instead moved to the Indonesian Hospital, where he continued treating patients under siege.
The Indonesian Hospital was surrounded by Israeli tanks in November 2023. Projectiles struck the building, killing at least 12 people and damaging its entrance. Al-Bursh was injured but survived. The Israeli military denied responsibility for that attack.
He subsequently moved to al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza.
Israeli forces surrounded al-Awda in December 2023 and detained al-Bursh alongside other medical workers. A colleague later told Sky News that Israeli troops had threatened to destroy the hospital, with women and children still inside, unless the male staff emerged.
The Israeli military confirmed that al-Bursh was taken to the Sde Teiman military detention facility on 19 December 2023. Another detained Palestinian doctor, Khalid Hamouda, said al-Bursh arrived there after being badly beaten, in severe pain and unable to use the toilet without assistance. He reportedly feared that his ribs had been broken.
The Israeli military said al-Bursh left Sde Teiman on 20 December and became the responsibility of the Israel Prison Service. He was eventually transferred to Ofer Prison, where he died on 19 April 2024.
Israeli authorities said he had been detained for national security reasons and was suspected of involvement in terrorism. He was never formally charged with a criminal offence.
Israel Prison Service denies allegations
The Israel Prison Service has previously denied accounts of abuse surrounding al-Bursh’s death.
In its response to Sky News, the service said it operated according to Israeli law and that prisoners received their legally required basic rights. It said it was unaware of the events described by witnesses and maintained that no such incident had occurred under its responsibility.
The service added that prisoners and detainees could submit complaints for examination by the appropriate authorities.
The Israeli military separately said al-Bursh had not died while under its responsibility because he had already been transferred to the prison service.
Those statements have not resolved questions about why a previously active surgeon died shortly after arriving at Ofer, what injuries he had sustained, why his body has not been returned or whether anyone has been held accountable.
UN experts demand independent investigation
A group of United Nations experts wrote to the Israeli government in June 2025 concerning the detention and alleged disappearance of Gaza’s healthcare workers.
Their joint communication said more than 250 healthcare workers had reportedly been detained since October 2023 and that almost 150 remained in custody at the time. At least four medical professionals, including al-Bursh, were reported to have died in detention.
The experts cited serious allegations of physical, psychological and sexual violence, starvation, medical neglect and other forms of cruel or degrading treatment. They called for an immediate, impartial, independent and effective investigation into the deaths of medical workers in custody.
They also reminded Israel that state authorities assume responsibility for the lives of people deprived of their liberty and have an obligation to investigate every suspicious death in detention.
Al-Bursh’s widow, Yasmin Hamada, renewed the family’s demand for an international investigation following the emergence of Hijazi’s testimony. She has also appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross to help secure the return of her husband’s body.
According to an August 2026 report by Al Jazeera, the couple’s five children remain unable to bury their father or say a final goodbye.
Hijazi said al-Bursh’s death formed part of a wider pattern of abuse that he encountered during his own detention. He claimed to have witnessed what he described as the “execution” of two detainees at Sde Teiman and the death of another prisoner with a heart condition at Ofer in 2025.
He accused the prison administration, the Israeli military and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of presiding over a system in which Palestinian detainees were dying without accountability or basic humanity.
“Prisoners are being killed in cold blood,” Hijazi said. “There is no responsibility and no humanity in the way they are treated.”
All quotations attributed to Islam al-Hijazi have been translated from Arabic. His allegations and the accounts relayed to him by other detainees have been clearly attributed where they could not be independently verified.
