The Israel Defense Forces released photos of Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket specialist Fadi al-Wadiya wearing the terror group’s uniform after Doctors Without Borders confirmed he was a staffer but denied he was a terrorist. Wadiya was killed in an airstrike in northern Gaza on Tuesday while bicycling to work.
“A physical therapist by day and a jihadist saboteur by night,” posted the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee on X, formerly known as Twitter on Wednesday night.
Adraee said Wadiya had worked for Islamic Jihad for 15 years helping manufacture rockets, adding that he was the terror group’s “expert in the fields of electronics and chemistry.”
Adraee also disclosed that the same year Wadiya joined Doctors Without Borders (MSF), “he tried to leave the Gaza Strip for Iran, accompanied by two other terrorists, in order to engage in terrorism training there.”
Adraee added, “No matter how much Doctors Without Borders tries to consider Al-Wadiya an innocent healer who saved lives, he is a dangerous saboteur who once again reminds of the way terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip exploit international relief organizations by describing them as a ‘human shield.’”
The Geneva-based medical aid organization denied Wadiya was terrorist and condemned the airstrike.
Terror Groups Penetrated Gaza Medical Sector
Eighty-five percent of Gaza’s hospitals have been used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad for terror according to the military.
As reported by The Press Service of Israel in October, Hamas made extensive use of the Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical center. Hamas launched rockets from its compound, hid hostages in the bowels of the building, tortured collaborators, and dug tunnels connecting Shifa to nearby sites. Israel also released a recording of a phone call confirming that Hamas also stores at least a half-million liters of fuel underneath the compound.
In March, Israeli forces raided Shifa after learning that Hamas established a small government administration center there. On the day that Israeli forces entered the Shifa compound, Hamas was about to pay salaries to hundreds of its civil and military officials. Soldiers arrested more than 800 terrorists.
In December, Ahmed Kahlot, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, confirmed to Israeli interrogators that he and other staff were Hamas operatives. During the interrogation, Kahlot described how Hamas used hospitals and ambulances to hide operatives, launch military activity, transport members of terror squads and even deliver a kidnapped Israeli soldier.
Other Gazans have told Israeli interrogators Hamas deeply embedded itself in the Palestinian Red Crescent Society to use hospitals as a base for attacks.
At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 116 remaining hostages, more than 30 are believed dead.
