An Israeli army official said on Thursday that “hostage-related images” taken during the Hamas attack in Israel were found on computers seized from Gaza’s Al-Chifa hospital two days ago had long been confiscated in an attack.
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The images were found on equipment that “belonged to Hamas,” he said in a statement, adding that the military operation was still underway on Thursday in the largest settlement in the Gaza Strip, where the UN said there were about 2,300 people – patients – stop, carers and displaced people.
“Soldiers are searching every floor, one building at a time, while hundreds of patients and medical staff remain in the complex,” the same source said.
Hundreds of soldiers surrounded all the buildings in the complex, forbade them to leave and fired at the buildings, an AFP correspondent on site reported in the afternoon.
Soldiers broke into burn units, emergency rooms, dialysis units and morgue cold rooms, he added.
At the end of the day, “the Israelis asked for someone to come out with a white flag to negotiate the evacuation of al-Chifa,” Youssef Abou Rich, the deputy health minister, told AFP about Hamas’s presence in al- Chifa.
The hospital’s director, Mohammed Abou Salmiya, responded: “We are civilians and this is a hospital. We want fuel to save the lives of our patients,” continued Mr. Abou Rich.
No water or electricity
Al-Khifa is portrayed by Israel as a strategic and military center of Hamas, a claim denied by the Islamist movement that seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007.
Entering the hospital on Wednesday, the Israeli army confirmed to AFP that its soldiers were still stationed at the hospital on Thursday for a “targeted” and “complex” operation that would be carried out “in stages.”
For its part, the Hamas Ministry of Health claimed that the Israeli army attacked several services in the facility. “They destroyed the radiology department and bombed the burns and dialysis department,” ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidreh told AFP.
“They are in the complex interviewing doctors, injured and displaced people,” he added. “We have no electricity, no drinking water, no food (…) Thousands of women, children, the sick and injured are in danger of dying.”
“Israeli bulldozers partially destroyed the southern entrance” to the complex, “near the maternity ward,” which had already been damaged by tank shells in recent days, the Hamas health ministry reported overnight.
Israel has vowed to “destroy” Hamas since the Palestinian movement’s bloody attack on its soil on October 7. The Islamist movement is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the USA and the European Union.
After its first day of intervention on Wednesday, the Israeli army claimed to have found Hamas “ammunition, weapons and military equipment” at that hospital and released images of what it said were weapons, grenades and other equipment.
The Israeli army “found neither weapons nor military equipment” in al-Chifa, the Hamas Ministry of Health responded, reiterating that it “does not authorize” the presence of weapons in its facilities.
The AFP could not independently verify these claims.