The mother of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the well-known director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, who was forcibly detained by Israeli forces in late December, has died of a heart attack, according to Palestinian sources.

Quds news network announced the death of Dr. Abu Safiya’s mother in a post on X on Wednesday, saying she died of a heart attack as her son has been missed for 12 days after the occupying regime forces abducted him from the medical facility.

In a post on X, Martyrs of Gaza also wrote that Dr. Abu Safiya’s mother, heartbroken by her son’s forced disappearance by Israel, has died of a cardiac arrest.

Abu Safiya was abducted on December 27, 2024 when Israeli forces stormed the bombed-out Kamal Adwan Hospital. All medical staff, patients and their relatives were taken out at gunpoint and transferred to an unknown location.

The last photo of Abu Safiya showed him walking alone towards a row of Israeli tanks that had amassed outside the facility.

Calls are growing for the immediate release of Dr. Abu Safiya following his heroic resistance in the face of the regime’s aggression.

Dr. Abu Safiya, 51, was among those taken for questioning by the Israeli military over alleged links to the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after Hamas-led resistance groups carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the occupying entity in response to its intensified violence against Palestinians.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed 45,885 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 109,196 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.

Israel’s attacks on civilian infrastructure, hospitals, and health care are part of a deliberate effort to collectively punish and depopulate across the besieged Palestinian territory, international rights groups and organizations have warned.