Global Courant
Israeli military sources are now beginning to call Israel’s attack on Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, one of the “largest and most successful” operations in the nearly six-month war with Hamas.
The IDF launched an operation on Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza on Monday, claiming that “senior Hamas terrorists” were using the hospital in Gaza City to “carry out and promote terrorist activities.”
A photo shows smoke rising after the Israeli bombardment near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on March 23, 2024, amid ongoing fighting between Israel and the militant group Hamas.
AFP via Getty Images
The Israeli military said it has detained more than 800 men and that about 480 of them are Hamas or Islamic Jihad members. Special intelligence units have begun interrogating some of them, and those found not to have links to militant groups were released, the IDF said. Israeli officials have said that more than 140 Hamas terrorists were killed during the operation.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said Thursday that the operation at Al-Shifa would last “several days.”
The IDF did not release video from the hospital on Sunday, but in recent days it has released images of food and water delivered by special forces to the approximately 3,000 civilians estimated to be sheltering in the hospital, according to IDF and Palestinian health officials.
People near the area were reportedly told to leave as reports emerged that some buildings near the complex had been detonated. At least 3,000 Gazans remain trapped in Al-Shifa with limited food and water as a result of the siege, according to hospital officials.
However, an Israeli official said militants are holed up in the hospital and that the army, instead of sending troops, is calling on them to surrender.
Palestinian woman Nozha Awad flees Al Shifa Hospital after an Israeli raid with her triplet children and heads south into the central Gaza Strip, on March 21, 2024. Israeli forces on Monday raided Al Shifa Hospital, where Awad and her children were taking refuge . The Gaza mother, who was besieged in hospital for three days, said she was living in famine-like conditions and her children were becoming malnourished due to the lack of food, water and milk.
Ramadan Abed/Reuters
Sources in Gaza, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns, confirmed that it was believed that many Hamas and Islamic Jihad members – including some high-level leaders – had regrouped at the hospital, believing that Israel was conducting the operations in northern Gaza had ended. Gaza. The sources told ABC News that people there are short of food and water and that conditions are desperate. The hospital has said several patients have died as a result of the siege.
Telecommunications were down near the hospital, but families who managed to flee the hospital arrived in central Gaza on Sunday – some in torn sandals and others too overwhelmed to talk. One family was filmed telling a local reporter that there were explosions everywhere and that “the walls were falling on us, we are from the Shifa complex… and this child,” the woman said as she gestured to a baby lying in a blanket was wrapped in her arms. , “was under the doors.” She said there are dead “under the rubble, there are burning houses – they are demolishing them over people’s heads.”
Israel has said it has not carried out targeted attacks on hospitals and claims Hamas abuses hospitals by operating inside and under them in tunnels and using them as command centers and to store weapons. The IDF has released videos it claims are evidence of Hamas operations. Hamas denies the accusations.
The IDF has said it is only targeting Hamas and other militants in Gaza and claims Hamas is deliberately hiding behind civilians, which the group denies.
Smoke rises over buildings during Israeli bombardments as people fleeing the Al-Shifa hospital complex and its surroundings in Gaza City reach the central part of the Gaza Strip on March 21, 2024.
AFP via Getty Images
Hamas carried out an unprecedented incursion into southern Israel from Gaza by air, land and sea on October 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 253 others hostage, according to Israeli authorities. More than 31,400 Palestinians have been killed and more than 72,000 others injured in Gaza since October 7, amid Israel’s continued ground operations and aerial bombardment of the strip, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.
This is not the first time that Israeli forces have invaded the Al-Shifa medical complex during the war with Hamas. An operation also took place in November, during which IDF soldiers claimed to have found weapons and a tunnel complex in the hospital.
Before the current raid, international organizations had said Al-Shifa was in a “serious” situation.
