ISRAELI TROOPS RAID LARGEST MEDICAL CENTRE IN GAZA’S NORTH
▶ Senior Hamas security official killed during operation at Al Shifa Hospital, military says after three-day siege
Israeli troops launched a raid at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza city yesterday, leading to several deaths at the largest medical centre in northern Gaza and a fire in its surgical building, witnesses and local media have reported.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said “a number of martyrs and wounded have fallen” since the operation began yesterday morning.
Israel’s military said Hamas’s head of internal security, Faiq Mabhouh, was killed during the raid.
“Mabhouh was responsible, among other things, for synchronising Hamas mechanisms in Gaza in routine and combat,” the army said in a post on social media.
Israel has regularly accused Hamas of using hospitals as command centres, an allegation fiercely denied by the Hamas-run Health Ministry and officials at Al Shifa.
During the operation, a fifthyear medical student posted a video taken in the hospital on social media, saying people inside the complex were facing siege-like conditions.
“We were told that anyone who tries to walk around the hospital will be targeted by snipers. We can’t go outside to tend to the injured, or even move in between buildings,” the student said.
“Some families have gone outside and were targeted and killed. The martyrs are littered on the floors without shrouds.”
The hospital had been under siege for three days before the raid, without food, electricity or running water, he said.
“We can’t perform ablution for prayers. We call on everyone who calls themselves a human to intervene immediately before the hospital turns into a mass grave.”
The Health Ministry said about 5,000 patients were being treated at the hospital, and at least 30,000 displaced people had sought refuge in the complex.
The Israeli military said it was conducting a “precise operation” based on intelligence “indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists”, and ordered Gazans to leave the area to avoid the fighting in and around the complex.
In a post on social media, Israeli military spokesman Lt Col Avichay Adraee told Gazans in Al Shifa Hospital and the surrounding district to immediately evacuate the area and move south to the town of Al Mawasi.
Imad Al Nathir, who was inside the hospital during the raid, said Israeli troops had already surrounded the complex when the operation began just before suhoor, the predawn meal before the day’s fast during Ramadan, and that intense gunfire and heavy shelling could be heard.
“Some people attempted to assess what was happening outside and found that snipers had positioned themselves in various areas around the complex,” Mr Al Nathir told The National.
Three hours later, he said, Israeli troops tore down the gates and began to move people out of the compound. “Soldiers then started calling on people to come out and surrender. They asked the displaced people to leave immediately.”
Israeli tanks surrounded the hospital site, witnesses said.
Haitham Alian, a relative of a patient at the hospital, said people who tried to escape were shot.
“Some people tried to es
Israel has regularly accused Hamas of using hospitals as command centres, an allegation denied by health officials
cape but Israeli gunfire caught up with them, resulting in injuries for some and others turning back.”
Mr Alian said he saw people being shot and killed in the surgical building, where he was when the raid started.
The government media office in Gaza condemned the operation, saying that “the storming of Al Shifa medical complex with tanks, drones and weapons, and shooting inside it, is a war crime”.
Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure has been devastated since the outbreak of war, with most hospitals forced to cease operations. Israel has conducted raids at several medical centres in the enclave.
The war began on October 7, when Hamas launched deadly attacks on southern Israeli communities, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 hostages.
Israel responded with a relentless air and ground campaign in Gaza, which the enclave’s Health Ministry says has led to the deaths of more than 31,700 people, mostly women and children, and injured more than 73,700.