Israeli military raids Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital complex, hundreds of patients remain trapped inside | CBC News
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The Israeli military said it was carrying out a raid on Wednesday against Hamas militants in the Al-Shifa Hospital complex, having urged them to surrender with thousands of Palestinian civilians still sheltering inside Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital.
Less than an hour earlier, at about 1 a.m. local time, a spokesperson for the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said Israel had told officials in the enclave that it would raid the complex “in the coming minutes.”
Dr. Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Gaza Health Ministry, told Al Jazeera television that Israeli forces had raided the western side of the medical complex. “There are big explosions and dust entered the areas where we are. We believe an explosion occurred inside the hospital,” al-Bursh said.
Global calls for a humanitarian ceasefire have mounted in recent days, and the fate of Al-Shifa — a sprawling complex of buildings and courtyards a few hundred metres from Gaza City’s small fishing port — has become a focus of international alarm because of worsening conditions in the facility, where thousands of patients, medical staff and displaced people have been trapped during the Israeli assault on Gaza in the past five weeks.
Israel has said that Hamas has a command centre underneath Al-Shifa and uses the hospital and tunnels beneath it to conceal military operations and to hold hostages, which Hamas denies.
In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said: “Based on intelligence information and an operational necessity, IDF forces are carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Al-Shifa Hospital.”
The military said: “The IDF forces include medical teams and Arabic speakers, who have undergone specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment, with the intent that no harm is caused to the civilians.”
Featured VideoIsrael’s forces have reached Gaza’s largest hospital, where hundreds of patients and civilians are believed to be sheltering inside. Israel says Hamas is using them as human shields, and it produced images of what appears to be an underground bunker discovered under another hospital.
U.S. gave Israel ‘green light,’ Hamas says
The U.S. said on Tuesday that its own intelligence supported Israel’s conclusions that Hamas has operated out of hospitals in Gaza.
But a White House spokesperson said Tuesday night that the administration does not support striking a hospital from the air and does not want to see a firefight in a hospital.
“We do not support striking a hospital from the air and we don’t want to see a firefight in a hospital where innocent people, helpless people, sick people trying to get medical care they deserve are caught in the crossfire,” said a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, who did not wish to be named.
“Hospitals and patients must be protected,” the spokesperson said.
Hamas, Gaza’s ruling Islamist group, denies fighters are present at the facility and says 650 patients and 5,000 to 7,000 other displaced civilians remain trapped inside the hospital grounds, under constant fire from snipers and drones. It says 40 patients have died in recent days, including three premature babies whose incubators were shut down when power went out.
The group said on Tuesday that it holds the White House partially responsible for Israel’s raid, saying the “adoption of the false narrative” that Hamas is using the hospital for military purposes was a “green light” for the IDF to carry out the operation.
Israel has sworn to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the militants’ cross-border assault into Israel on Oct 7. Israel says Hamas killed 1,200 people in the rampage and took more than 240 hostage.
Israeli forces have waged fierce street battles against Hamas fighters over the past 10 days before advancing into the centre of Gaza City and surrounding Al-Shifa.
‘Dramatic loss of life’
Medical staff have said the hospital is barely functioning due to Israeli attacks and a lack of fuel to power generators.
Officials say 36 babies are left from the neo-natal ward after three died. Without fuel for generators to power incubators, the babies were being kept as warm as possible, lined up eight to a bed.
Palestinians trapped in the hospital dug a mass grave on Tuesday to bury patients who died, and no plan was in place to evacuate babies despite Israel announcing an offer to send portable incubators, Ashraf Al-Qidra, Gaza’s Health Ministry spokesperson, said.
Featured VideoDr. Marwan Abusada, a leading surgeon at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, describes a dire situation where patients, including premature babies, face serious and growing risks.
Al-Qidra said there were about 100 bodies decomposing inside and no way to get them out.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres was deeply disturbed by the “dramatic loss of life” in the hospitals, his spokesperson said. “In the name of humanity, the secretary general calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” the spokesperson told reporters.
Medical officials in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 11,000 people are confirmed dead from Israeli strikes, about 40 per cent of them children, and countless others are trapped under rubble.
About two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been made homeless, unable to escape the territory where food, fuel, fresh water and medical supplies are running out.
Questions of international law
Israel’s move toward Al-Shifa hospital has raised questions about how it would interpret international laws on protection of medical facilities and the thousands of displaced people sheltering there, UN human rights officials have said.
Hospitals are protected buildings under international humanitarian law. But allegations that Al-Shifa is also being used for military purposes complicated the situation because that would also breach international law, UN officials have said.
Medical units that are used for acts harmful to the enemy — and which have ignored a warning to stop doing so — lose their special protection under international law.
Israel said in its statement on Wednesday that it had given Gaza authorities 12 hours to cease military activities within the hospital. “Unfortunately, it did not,” the military statement said.
In an interview before the raid, Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch, said that even if Hamas was proven to be using hospitals to conduct military operations, international law required that effective warnings be given before attacks.
This meant people there needed a safe place to go and a safe way to get there, Shakir said.
Trudeau calls for ‘maximum restraint’
Five weeks after Israel swore to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the militant group’s cross-border assault, the fate of Al-Shifa has become a focus of international alarm because of worsening conditions in the facility.
On Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the “human tragedy” unfolding in Gaza, especially at Al-Shifa, “heart-wrenching” and called on Israel to act with “maximum restraint.”
“The price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians,” Trudeau, who previously stated Israel has the right to defend itself after the Oct. 7 attack, said on Tuesday.
Featured VideoIsrael must use ‘maximum restraint’ to protect civilian life as it wages war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday, saying ‘the price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians.’ He also said Hamas must stop using civilians as human shields, and that all hostages taken from Israel must be released immediately and unconditionally.
He said the violence must urgently stop so Palestinians can get access to life-saving medical services, food, fuel and water; so hostages can be released; and so Canadians and other foreign nationals can escape.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a Tuesday social media post directed at Trudeau, blamed Hamas for putting civilians in harm’s way.
“It is Hamas not Israel that should be held accountable for committing a double war crime — targeting civilians while hiding behind civilians,” Netanyahu said on X, the platform previous known as Twitter.
U.S. supports Israel’s human shield claim
The U.S. government on Tuesday said the evidence it has seen supports Israel’s assertion that the hospital sits atop a Hamas hub.
It said Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad use hospitals, including Al-Shifa, to conceal tunnels, run military operations, hold hostages and possibly store weapons.
Yet White House spokesperson John Kirby also said that doesn’t mean the hospital can be attacked indiscriminately.
“To be clear, we do not support striking a hospital from the air,” he told reporters.
“And we do not want to see a firefight in a hospital where innocent people, helpless people, sick people, are simply trying to get the medical care that they deserve…. Hospitals and patients must be protected.”
Kirby said this underscores the challenge Israel has — of uprooting an armed group embedded in civilian infrastructure.
Hamas, which has controlled the coastal enclave since 2007, has built a tunnel city stretching beneath Gaza for hundreds of kilometres, up to 80 metres deep in parts.
Violence flares in West Bank
In the occupied West Bank, a separate Palestinian enclave not controlled by Hamas, Palestinian Authority Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said Israel was “committing a new crime against humanity, medical staff and patients by besieging” Al-Shifa Hospital.
“We hold the occupation forces fully responsible for the lives of the medical staff, patients and displaced people in Al-Shifa,” al-Kaila said in a statement.
Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians in the West Bank, seven of them in clashes during a raid in the town of Tulkarm near the boundary with Israel, Palestinian medics and local media said.
The Israeli army and police said their forces, sent into Tulkarm to detain suspected militants, came under fire and killed several Palestinian gunmen in the ensuing skirmish. An Israeli airstrike hit a group of Palestinians who shot and threw a bomb at the group, an army and police statement said.
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