By Abeer Salman, Irene Nasser and Jomana Karadsheh, CNN (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, family 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. In a statement shared with CNN Sunday, Abu Safiya’s family said: “We do not know the fate of our father, and we urge you to take action by applying media pressure, making appeals, and sharing news reports to help us push for his swift release from captivity.” Two Palestinian prisoners released this weekend from Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman detention center said they saw Abu Safiya at the prison, and another former detainee said he heard Abu Safiya’s name being read out. CNN cannot independently verify their accounts. CNN has reached out to the Israeli military to confirm whether Abu Safiya is held at the center. The Israeli military acknowledged Saturday it had detained Dr. Abu Safiya, saying he was “suspected of being a Hamas terrorist operative.” Local journalist Mohammad Al-Sharif told CNN he was with Abu Safiya up until the doctor was arrested. He said the doctor was “beaten and dragged by his clothes.” Waleed Al Buddi, a nurse who worked at Kamal Adwan Hospital, told CNN on Saturday that Abu Safiya was allowed to leave after Israeli security forces interrogated him at the Al Fakhoura school next to the hospital. Al Buddi, who was also interrogated and later released, said Abu Safiya refused to leave without the rest of his staff. Later that evening, some of the staff were released, while others including Abu Safiya, were arrested, Al Buddi said. 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.” “Individuals are being questioned. Those found not to be involved in terrorist activities are released,” the IDF said. Hamas, in a statement Saturday, called on “the United Nations and all relevant international institutions to urgently intervene.” “We demand the sending of international observers to these facilities to ascertain the truth of what is happening and to refute the lies and claims of the occupation regarding their use for military purposes,” the statement read. 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. ‘No limit to the beating’ 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. “We were told to gather in the hospital yard. They ordered us to remove our clothes, and after complying, we were taken to a location near the hospital yard,” local journalist Ahmad Al-Sharif recounted, “I was detained from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and lived under extremely harsh conditions. When I asked for water, the army officer insulted and cursed me with unbearable words.” The IDF said it had helped evacuate staff and patients ahead of the operation, later adding that “an additional 95 patients, caregivers and medical personnel” were taken to the Indonesian Hospital “to maintain and operate essential systems.” It is often necessary for terror suspects to take off their clothes so that their clothes can be searched and to ensure that they are not concealing explosive vests or other weaponry. According to IDF guidelines, as soon as possible after the search, their clothing is returned to them or alternative clothing is provided.” Asked by CNN about the allegations of strip searches and beatings of patients, as well as if they had evidence to the claims against Dr. Abu Safiya, the IDF responded the claims, saying, “The detention of suspects involved in terrorism, their arrest, and the search conducted on their bodies were carried out in accordance with international law. Video sent by nurse Rawiya Al Batsh from the Indonesian Hospital, seen by CNN, showed upturned furniture and tattered blankets strewn along the dusty corridors. The buzz of Israeli drones can be heard overhead. CNN has reached to the Israeli military asking for comment on allegations that men and women were forced to strip. Several staff also reported a large fire breaking out. Al Batsh told CNN that the blaze broke out in the hospital after Israeli strikes on the building, with staff forced to use water from a kidney dialysis machine to fight the flames. “Unfortunately, this water was mixed with chlorine and other substances, resulting in burns on their hands and faces,” Al Batsh said, adding one patient died in the fire. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN that “there was a small fire in an empty building inside the hospital that is under control,” adding that it is “unaware” of allegations that the fire was caused by IDF gunfire. It added that its troops “are operating in the area of the hospital and not inside of it.” An audio message from staff at Kamal Adwan said that surgical departments, laboratory, maintenance, and emergency units have been completely burned. The WHO has previously said that Israeli authorities have repeatedly denied humanitarian access to Kamal Adwan Hospital and just this week said that a request to deploy international emergency medical teams was denied by Israeli authorities, “despite the need for immediate surgical interventions for injured patients.” Some patients were taken to Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. CNN footage shows patients who had arrived from Kamal Adwan Hospital, including women, children and those with special needs. In the video, a man with special needs is trying to explain what happened to him, making signs of gunfire and gestures indicating that he has been beaten on his arms and face. He arrived alone and his bare feet are covered in dust. The patient’s name is Khaled Hazzaa, according to another man stood nearby who says he is Hazzaa’s nephew. The man says they had not seen each other for 82 days until Al Shifa Hospital called him. Hazzaa was being treated at Kamal Adwan Hospital, the man says. Another woman CNN spoke to at Al Shifa Hospital said she arrived at Kamal Adwan hospital for treatment two days ago after her house was hit in an Israeli strike and her son was killed. During the raid on Friday, Fatmeh Al Najjar also said that men and women were interrogated and then soldiers “took us in military vehicles and left us at Abu Sharekh roundabout. From there, they told us to walk south.” MedGlobal, the US-based nonprofit Abu Safiya was lead physician in Gaza for, also expressed concern for the doctor and condemned the raid on the hospital. Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president and co-founder of MedGlobal and a close colleague of Abu Safiya, said on Sunday: “Dr. Abu Safiya has dedicated his life to protecting the health and lives of children in Gaza, providing care under conditions no medical professional should have to endure. His arrest is not only unjust – it is a violation of international humanitarian law, which upholds the protection of medical personnel in conflict zones. We urgently call for the immediate and unconditional release of Dr. Abu Safiya.” In a Friday statement, the group’s Country Director for Gaza, Rajaa Musleh, said Abu Safiya and his team are the “lifeline of healthcare provision” in northern Gaza. Khader Al Za’anoun of Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, contributed to this report. This story has been updated The-CNN-Wire & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

We Gatherin’ 2025 is almost here and St. Lucy is where it all begins. In January Barbadians in the Diaspora will be welcomed to “Come ‘Long Home” to enjoy a wide range of activities in the parish and island overall. Member of Parliament for St. Lucy, Peter Phillips, outlined the activities planned for that parish.

By Stephen Collinson, CNN (CNN) — Former President Jimmy Carter, a Georgia peanut farmer who vowed to restore morality and truth to politics after an era of White House scandal and who redefined post-presidential service, died Sunday at the age of 100. The Carter Center said the 39th president died in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family. The White House has been notified that Carter has died, per a Biden administration official. Preparations for the state funeral have begun, according to a law enforcement official. Carter had been in home hospice care since February 2023 after a series of short hospital stays. Carter, a Democrat, served a single term from 1977 to 1981, losing a reelection bid to Ronald Reagan. Despite his notable achievements as a peacemaker, Carter’s presidency is largely remembered as an unfulfilled four years shaken by blows to America’s economy and standing overseas. His most enduring legacy, though, might be as a globetrotting elder statesman and human rights pioneer during an indefatigable 43-year “retirement.” Carter became the oldest living former president when he surpassed the record held by the late George H.W. Bush in March 2019. Carter’s beloved wife, Rosalynn, died in November 2023. They had been inseparable during their 77-year marriage, and after she passed away, the former president said in a statement that “as long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.” The former president attended his wife’s memorial events, including a private burial and a televised tribute service in Atlanta, where he was seated in the front row in a reclined wheelchair. He did not deliver any remarks. Carter took office in 1977 with the earnest promise to lead a government as “good and honest and decent and compassionate and filled with love as are the American people” following what had started as an unlikely long-shot bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination. The Southerner with a flashing smile did enjoy significant successes, particularly abroad. He forged a rare, enduring Middle East peace deal between Israel and Egypt that stands to this day, formalized President Richard Nixon’s opening to communist China and put human rights at the center of US foreign policy. But Carter was ultimately felled by a 444-day hostage crisis in Iran, in which revolutionary students flouted the US superpower by holding dozens of Americans in Tehran. The feeling of US malaise triggered by the crisis was exacerbated by Carter’s domestic struggles, including a sluggish economy, inflation and an energy crisis. At times, Carter’s principled moral tone and determination to strip the presidency of ostentation, such as by selling the official yacht, Sequoia, seemed to verge on sanctimony. But out of office, Carter won admiration by living his values. Just a day after one of several falls he suffered in 2019, he was back out building homes for Habitat for Humanity, even with an ugly black eye and 14 stitches — and teaching Sunday school as he had done several hundreds of times. The devout Southern Baptist’s life’s work was only just beginning when he limped out of the White House, humiliated by Reagan’s 1980 Republican landslide, in which the incumbent won only six states and the District of Columbia. “As one of the youngest of former presidents, I expected to have many useful years ahead of me,” Carter wrote in his 1982 memoir, “Keeping Faith.” He proved as good as his word, going on to become a humanitarian icon, perhaps more popular outside the United States than he was at home. Over four decades, Carter, Rosalynn and his Atlanta-based organization monitored hot-spot elections, negotiated with despots, battled poverty and homelessness, fought disease and epidemics, and promoted public health in the developing world. In the process, Carter did nothing less than reinvent the concept of the post-presidency, blazing a philanthropic path since adopted by successors such as Bill Clinton and, in Africa, George W. Bush. His efforts on behalf of his Carter Center, founded to “wage peace, fight disease and build hope,” yielded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Even into old age, Carter remained a polarizing political figure. He was an uneasy member of the ex-presidents’ club, sometimes frustrating successors like Clinton and criticizing the foreign policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and of US allies such as Israel. In recent years, he came full circle as he warned of the corrosive impact on American politics of a scandal-plagued White House — just as he did when his critique of the Nixon era helped him beat the disgraced Republican ex-president’s unelected successor, Gerald Ford, in 1976. (After Carter left office, he and Ford became close friends.) In September 2019, Carter warned Americans against reelecting President Donald Trump. “I think it will be a disaster to have four more years of Trump,” he said. After losing reelection, his work at the Carter Center became a great consolation. The ex-president said in a moving news conference detailing a cancer diagnosis in August 2015 that being president had been the highlight of his political career, even if it ended prematurely — though he would not swap another four years in the White House for the joy he had taken after leaving office in working with the Carter Center. And he said he was at peace with his legacy after a rich, fulfilling life: “I think I have been as blessed as any human being in the world.” Carter also said at that August news conference that marrying Rosalynn was the “pinnacle” of his life. He is survived by four children — Jack, Chip, Jeff and Amy — 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, according to the Carter Center. In April 2021, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited the Carters at their home in Plains, after the former presidential couple was unable to travel to Washington for the 46th president’s inauguration. An unlikely president Carter had always seemed an unlikely president. No one gave the Georgia governor and former Navy submariner a hope when he launched his campaign for the White House. But Carter spent months crisscrossing the cornfields and small towns of Iowa, building support voter by voter. In many ways, his success created the political lore of the modern Iowa caucuses as a place where little-known outsiders — Obama, for instance — could build a grassroots campaign that could lead to the White House. Democrats have recently downgraded the Hawkeye State’s role in their nominating process, reasoning that its mostly White demographic doesn’t represent the diversity of their supporters or the nation. Timing is crucial for presidential hopefuls, and as it turned out, Carter proved to be the right man at the right time in 1976. The deep political wounds of the Watergate scandal, which had forced the resignation of Nixon, remained raw. The nation was still deeply cynical about politicians following the social dislocation of the Vietnam War. “I’ll never lie to you,” Carter promised voters, forging a public image as an honest, humble, God-fearing, racially inclusive son of the “New South.”“He was never embarrassed to have a Georgian accent or be in blue jeans and play horseshoes and softball,” said his biographer Douglas Brinkley. That down-to-earth persona of Carter proved alluring. He followed up victory in the Iowa caucuses with wins in New Hampshire and Florida, beating out Democratic candidates including George Wallace of Alabama, Morris Udall of Arizona and Jerry Brown of California. “My name is Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president,” Carter said, poking fun at his leap from obscurity as he accepted his party’s nomination at the 1976 Democratic convention in New York City, where he tapped Sen. Walter Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate. Carter’s openness was crucial to his appeal with voters — but occasionally, his truth-telling appeared off-key. On one such occasion, Carter admitted to Playboy that he had looked on women with lust and “committed adultery in my heart many times.” A focus on human rights Carter beat Ford by 297 to 240 electoral votes and vowed in his inaugural address to put universal rights at the center of US foreign policy. “Our moral sense dictates a clear-cut preference for those societies which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights. We do not seek to intimidate, but it is clear that a world which others can dominate with impunity would be inhospitable to decency and a threat to the well-being of all people,” he said. Carter’s most significant achievement as president was the Camp David Accords, reached after exhaustive negotiations between Egypt and Israel that peaked at the presidential retreat in Maryland. It was the first peace deal between the Jewish state and one of its Arab enemies. The agreement, signed by Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1978, called for a formal peace between the foes and the establishment of diplomatic relations. It resulted in the Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula and called for an Israeli exit from the West Bank and Gaza, with promised future negotiations to resolve the Palestinian question. While it did not settle the question of East Jerusalem, and subsequent violence and political unrest between Israel and the Palestinians meant the deal’s full potential was never realized, the enduring peace between Israel and Egypt remains a linchpin of US diplomacy in the region. In subsequent decades, Carter soured on the Israeli leadership, becoming deeply critical of what he saw as a failure to live up to obligations toward the Palestinians. He sparked controversy in 2006 by saying that Israel’s settlement policies on the West Bank were tantamount to the apartheid policies of South Africa. The Carter administration also forged progress outside the Middle East, in Latin America and Asia. He countered growing hostility to the United States throughout the Western Hemisphere by concluding the Panama Canal treaties in 1977, which would return the strategic waterway between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to the control of its host nation in 1999. There had been fears that the Panamanians, increasingly resentful of US sovereignty, could trigger a showdown by closing the canal — a step that would have had significant economic and strategic consequences. Carter also built on Nixon’s achievement of opening China by formalizing an agreement to establish full diplomatic relations in January 1979. An iconic visit to the United States by a cowboy-hat-wearing Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping followed. The decision was a tough one for Carter and required him to sever formal diplomatic relations with the renegade government and US ally in Taiwan — which had claimed to be the legitimate government of China — in favor of the communists in Beijing. That June, Carter and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev signed the treaty concluding the second round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), which placed broad limits on strategic nuclear arms. Some analysts also give Carter credit for beginning the buildup of sophisticated weaponry that later helped Reagan outpace the Soviet Union and win the Cold War — a heavy political lift as the Pentagon remained unpopular in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Crises at home and abroad At home, meanwhile, Carter established the Department of Energy and exhorted Americans to cut down on consumption amid an oil price spike. He installed solar panels on the White House roof. He also began the process of deregulating the airline and trucking industries. But in 1979, Carter did himself significant political damage in an extraordinary address to the nation on the energy crisis in which he listed criticisms of his presidency, painting a picture of a listless nation trapped in a moral and spiritual funk. “It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation,” Carter said. Ultimately, the speech came back to haunt Carter