After surrounding it for five days, the Israeli army entered at dawn this Tuesday with tanks and soldiers the largest hospital in Gaza, Al Shifa, where more than 2,000 people, including patients, medical staff and, above all, civilians , seeking shelter from the bombings. The armored vehicles remain stationed outside some buildings while dozens of soldiers conduct interrogations and search rooms and basements in part of the hospital. The soldiers, some of whom are masked and firing in the air, search the rooms for militiamen, search women and children and force the rest to go through a facial recognition system, Agence France Presse reports. They also call on all men over the age of 16 to walk into the yard with their hands raised to surrender.
The Israeli Defense Forces speak of a “precise and localized operation,” limited to “a specific area” of the medical center and based on “intelligence information” and “operational needs.” A senior Israeli military commander would not specify in which part of the compound they are operating and interrogating Palestinians, saying it could endanger their troops and the civilians present there.
The invasion seems, for now, to be dictated by the limits proposed by the United States a few hours earlier: green light (pointing out that they have their own intelligence that the Hamas command center is under Al Shifa), but without Air raids or starting fires. In a statement, the armed Islamist group blamed both Israel and United States President Joe Biden “fully” for the “crime.”
Hundreds of young people have already left various buildings of the hospital (which consists of several wings), answering the call that was broadcast in Arabic over loudspeakers. Israeli troops initially took over the emergency room and surgery, tearing holes in the walls and filling the rooms with dust, as seen in television images broadcast from inside.
The general director of Gaza’s hospitals, Mohamed Zaqout, says he hears patients’ cries of fear. “One of the large tanks entered the hospital through the main east entrance and they were parked in front of the hospital’s emergency room,” Ahmed El Mokhallalati, a surgeon at the center, told Portal. “They used all sorts of weapons around the hospital. They fired directly at the hospital. “We try to be close to the windows,” he added. According to those in charge of the center and the Israeli military high command, no fighting was reported at the hospital.
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In the satellite image taken on November 7, dozens of cars and people can be seen around Al-Shifa HospitalMAXAR TECHNOLOGIES (via Portal)
For his part, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, pointed out on the social network must have.”
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that at least 600 patients, between 200 and 500 workers and 1,500 displaced people remain in Al Shifa. Hospital officials said Tuesday they had been forced to dig a mass grave to bury at least 120 bodies.
Israel places the epicenter of the tunnel network used by Palestinian militants under the medical center. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for his army, justified the operation as both a search for the Hamas command center and that it would “perhaps” enable the rescue of some of the approximately 240 hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack. They are held (mainly) by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other small armed groups or individuals with no clear affiliation.
The only images of the raid that the Israeli army has released are packages labeled “medical supplies” and “baby food.” It also claims to have supplied incubators. It wasn’t them missing in the middle, but rather the electricity that powered them.
Without food, water or electricity, Al Shifa had not functioned for days, surrounded by the troops who entered the Gaza capital last week and were stationed outside the hospital shortly afterwards. There has been no electricity there for days. It relies on generators powered by fuel that Israel has prevented from supplying since October 7, when it began its offensive following the Hamas-planned attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians.
The army also points out that it killed five militiamen in shootings on the road on the way to the hospital, without any injuries to its troops. This Tuesday he published a symbolic photo in which he waved the Israeli flag in the Gaza parliament and they took over the Shati refugee camp with about 50,000 inhabitants and also in the capital.
Due to difficulties accessing the bodies, the Hamas government’s health ministry has stopped updating the Palestinian death toll. The number is over 11,000, more than half of whom are minors and women. They are larger than all attacks recorded so far this century up to October 6, including the Second Intifada and successive offensives in Gaza since 2008, although on a smaller scale.
Recording of an Israeli Army video showing Israeli soldiers at Al Shifa Hospital. EFE (Israeli Army)
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