Israeli forces briefly detain teenage Palestinian activist Aboud Battah
Israeli forces briefly held a famous teenage Palestinian activist during a deadly raid on northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital on Friday, before he was let go.
Abdul Rahman Battah, known as 'Aboud', was rounded up along with other male patients, medical staff and displaced people present in the hospital.
Hours later, Battah posted on Instagram that he managed to get out. “Thank God we survived,” the caption read.
"They zip-tied us and started verbally insulting us," he said in another video recalling his detention.
"One soldier recognised me from my videos and started beating me and insulting me and family," he added. "He said: 'You are not going home. I will bury you here.'"
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An officer later released Aboud, the teenager said.
However, the fate of the other men detained from the hospital is unknown.
Photos posted online showed a group of men stripped to their underwear, zip-tied and placed in an open area surrounded by tanks.
Middle East Eye could not independently verify the photo or determine when and where it was taken.
Battah rose to prominence on social media during the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, which has killed over 42,800 Palestinians and wounded more than 100,000 people, mostly children and women.
Many of his vlogs documenting life in Gaza amid the war went viral on Tik Tok and Instagram, garnering millions of followers.
Known as the "child-journalist", Battah used sarcasm and humour to report from the ground in Gaza, combining footage of the devastation with details of day to day life in the war-torn enclave.
'Stop the massacres'
He was among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who defied Israeli expulsion orders issued for large swaths of northern Gaza, remaining there to continue his reporting.
On 15 October, Battah posted a message on social media urging the world to take action to “stop the massacres and death in Gaza".
“We’ve been dying for an entire year. We are not numbers, we suffer and die every day.”
“We’ve been dying for an entire year. We are not numbers, we suffer and die every day.”
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 15, 2024
Palestinian activist Aboud Battah posted a message on social media urging the world to take action to stop the "massacres and death" in Gaza.
At least 42,010 Palestinians have been killed and… pic.twitter.com/PuKm3YrGzT
In another post on 20 October, Battah reported over the sound of gun fire, that “the shelling and shooting from military vehicles, helicopters and quadcopter drones are nonstop… I swear we are truly being annihilated.”
Before his detention, Battah’s last Instagram stories documented Israel’s latest deadly strikes on Jabalia, when it carpet-bombed residential buildings, killing and wounding at least 150 people.
Battah’s brief detention followed unevidenced claims by the Israeli military that six Palestinian Al Jazeera journalists are members of either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Al Jazeera denounced the claims as "fabricated accusations," expressing fears that the allegations would serve as "a pretext for further violence against the journalists, mirroring the tragic fates of other media professionals targeted and killed by Israeli occupation forces".
At least 128 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since the war began a year ago, according to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
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