‘He was the light of my life and I lost him’: How a famous surgeon died in an Israeli prison after being taken from Gaza hospital

As a famous orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Adnan Al-Bursh spent much of his career fixing broken limbs and broken bodies at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital.

One of the best-trained doctors in the enclave, a photo showing him covered in blood in Al-Shifa’s operating theatre went viral in 2018.

When war broke out last October, he worked around the clock. Pictures stored on his mobile phone show him standing in a hole, swinging a blunt-edged shovel as the hospital descended into crisis.

It had run out of fuel, food and basic pain relief and there was no more space to store dead bodies. Dressed in hospital scrubs, Dr Al-Bursh and his colleagues dug mass graves as the sound of explosions rang out behind the hospital’s walls.

Soon after the outbreak of the conflict, the surgeon, along with his wife Yasmin, realised that their world had changed forever.

“Adnan was needed every time there was a war,” she recalled. “So, I told him, ‘get ready, there will be lots of operations, they will need your help’. He went to hospital to receive the injured and stayed for 24 hours. He did not stop.”

Dr Al-Bursh spent his days in the operating room and slept in the staff room at night.

He also kept a diary of sorts with his mobile phone, documenting the increasingly desperate scenes unfolding around him.

“Despite the pain, we are steadfast,” he said as he filmed the scene in a crowded operating theatre.

Israel said the foundations of Al-Shifa were laced with tunnels where Hamas operated a ‘command-and-control centre’, something Hamas denies.

As Israeli troops advanced towards the facility, Dr Al-Bursh captured the mood inside. Another video found on his mobile phone shows a colleague in the staffroom recalling a painful conversation with his wife.

“I remember that she only asked one thing of me, what do you think it was? That request was ‘just let me see you smile’.

“Smile. It’s the first thing I want to do after this war, if God saves us.”

By mid-November, Al-Shifa was under siege by Israeli troops.

A week later, patients, staff and some 50,000 displaced residents sheltering in the compound were ordered to evacuate.

Dr Al-Bursh captured the scene of long columns of people walking towards southern Gaza.

But the surgeon did not follow them. Instead, he went northeast to another facility – the Indonesian Hospital – still operating in northern Gaza. What he found on his arrival horrified him.

“I was shocked by the size of the catastrophe here,” he said in a video. “There are injured people who have been waiting for their operations for more than ten days. [Their] wounds were severely infected.”

On 20 November 2023, the Indonesian Hospital was surrounded by Israeli tanks and later that evening, projectiles were fired into the second floor. At least 12 people were killed.

Dr Al-Bursh survived with minor scrapes but the front entrance of the facility was torn apart. “The destruction is everywhere,” he said in another video.

A spokesman for the IDF denied that Israeli forces were responsible.

By early December 2023, Dr Al-Bursh had moved to a small hospital, also in the north, called Al-Awda.

A series of pictures, posted on the hospital’s social media page, show him examining patients with fatigue etched on his face.

These are the last known images taken of the surgeon.

The Israeli military surrounded the hospital on 5 December, and the staff were worried about what the soldiers would do.

Dr Al-Bursh worked at Al-Awda alongside a friend and colleague, Dr Mohammad Obeid.

Eventually, the hospital’s director told them that they would have to leave the building.

“[The director] told us that the [Israeli army] have full data of all males aged between 14 and 65 at Awda hospital,” Dr Obeid said, tearfully. “They told him that if all men do not come down… they will destroy the Awda Hospital with all the women and children in it.”

We put this allegation to the IDF but they did not respond.

The men filed out of the hospital and five, including Dr Al-Bursh, were taken away.

“A soldier came up to us and called out Dr Adnan’s name, who was sitting next to me… I felt he was in a very difficult situation. The occupation soldier took him and the treatment was very rough.”

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In a brief statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed to Sky News that Dr Al-Bursh was detained by its personnel. On 19 December 2023, it says the surgeon was taken to an Israeli military base called Sde Teiman, which has been used for processing detainees since the early part of the war.

Allegations of physical, mental and sexual abuse are rife. A former camp inmate, Dr Khalid Hamouda, believes many of the prisoners at Sde Teiman were medical professionals.

“In the camp where I was, there were about 100 prisoners. I think at least a quarter of them were involved in healthcare. Some of them were doctors, nurses and technicians.”

Dr Hamouda was put to work by the guards at the base as their helper or ‘shawish’, and remembers being told to fetch Dr Al-Bursh at the gate. When he collected him, his fellow doctor said he had been badly beaten and felt pain all over his body.

“He thought he may have broken ribs,” Dr Hamouda said. “He was unable to even go to the toilet alone.”

The IDF told Sky News that after Dr Al-Bursh was processed, he left Sde Teiman on 20 December and became the “responsibility” of the Israeli Prison Service.

In April, the surgeon was taken to an incarceration facility near Jerusalem called Ofer Prison.

He died shortly after his arrival. News of the surgeon’s death was announced in a statement from two Palestinian prisoner support associations at the beginning of May. The Israelis offered no explanation or cause of death.

Sky News has spoken to people who claim to have witnessed the moments before Dr Al-Bursh’s death.

A prisoner, who says he previously knew Dr Al-Bursh in Gaza, provided details in a deposition to lawyers from the Israeli human rights organisation HaMoked.

“In mid-April 2024, Dr Adnan Al-Bursh arrived at Section 23 in Ofer Prison. The prison guards brought Dr Adnan Al-Bursh into the section in a deplorable state. He had clearly been assaulted with injuries around his body. He was naked in the lower part of his body.

“The prison guards threw him in the middle of the yard and left him there. Dr Adnan Al-Bursh was unable to stand up. One of the prisoners helped him and accompanied him to one of the rooms. A few minutes later, prisoners were heard screaming from the room they went into, declaring Dr Adnan Al-Bursh (was dead).”

While some people might suggest that Dr Adnan Al-Bursh was a terrorist, Daqqa said: “If you want to formally answer this question, he was not charged until now. And many of these detainees are not charged from Gaza.”

In a statement to Sky News, a spokesman for the Israel Prison Service said: “IPS is a law enforcement organisation that operates according to the provisions of the law and under the supervision of the state comptroller and many other official critiques.

“All prisoners are detained according to the law. All basic rights required are fully applied by professionally trained prison guards.

“We are not aware of the claims you described and as far as we know, no such events have occurred under IPS responsibility. Nonetheless, prisoners and detainees have the right to file a complaint that will be fully examined and addressed by official authorities.”

Sky News was told by colleagues and Dr Al-Bursh’s wife Yasmin that he was in good physical condition before his arrest.

“He was the light of my life and I lost him,” Yasmin said.

Dr Al-Bursh was prepared to risk his life to save others. This story is one of a countless number, now buried under the immovable weight of Gaza’s recent past.

But Dr Al-Bursh lived and lost his life in a manner that demands acknowledgement, his friends and family members say.