2024-03-18 09:49:42
New “targeted” operation by the Israeli army on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. According to an IDF statement this Monday morning, “the operation is based on information indicating the use of the hospital by high-ranking Hamas terrorists.”
???? The IDF is currently conducting a specific operation in an area of Shifa Hospital, based on intelligence information indicating the use of the hospital by high-ranking Hamas terrorists to carry out and promote terrorist activities.
— Tsahal (@Tsahal_IDF) March 18, 2024
What happened ?
The Israeli army released what it said was an excerpt from a telephone exchange that took place “in recent days” between the Israeli Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) and an official from the Ministry of Health in Gaza , during which his representative explains that he is “ready” to provide aid if “terrorist activities” within the hospital stop.
????IDF troops are currently conducting a precise operation in the area of Shifa hospital—based on intelligence information indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists to conduct and promote terrorist activity.
Watch IDF Spokeperson RAdm. Daniel Hagari describe… pic.twitter.com/jKdUdNpY91
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) March 18, 2024
On the spot, witnesses confirmed to AFP “air operations” in the al-Rimal neighborhood where the hospital is located, the largest in the Gaza Strip, in which “shrapnel” reportedly fell. “. Residents of this central neighborhood of Gaza City claimed that “more than 45 Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers” had entered al-Rimal. Some also report “fights” around the hospital.
The Israeli army speaks through loudspeakers to residents, asking them to stay at home while “drones shoot at people in the streets near the hospital”, according to witnesses on site interviewed by AFP. “During the operation, the terrorists opened fire on the troops from the hospital,” explains another joint statement from the army and Israeli domestic intelligence. “The troops responded by shooting,” he continued, suggesting that individuals had been hit by the shots.
According to images on social media that have not been independently verified, dozens of people fled the hospital.
Ministry of Health in Gaza warns: “We hold the Israeli occupation responsible for the lives of medical staff, patients, and displaced Palestinians inside Al-Shifa Hospital.” pic.twitter.com/SPJS4uVjEg
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) March 18, 2024
Israeli troops received “instructions on the importance of operating with caution, as well as measures to take to avoid harm to patients, civilians, medical personnel,” the army press release further specifies. “Arabic-speaking people were brought on site to facilitate exchanges with patients,” he adds, “patients and medical staff are not obliged to evacuate.”
However, in the morning, the Israeli army asked the civilian population to “immediately” evacuate the hospital area. “For your safety, you must immediately evacuate the area to the west” and then take the road along the coast “south to the humanitarian zone of Al-Mawasi”, located in the south of the Gaza Strip, wrote an Israeli army spokesperson in Arabic. Witnesses told AFP that leaflets with the same message had been dropped in the area.
What do the Palestinians say?
“We confirm that Israel’s stories are false,” Palestinian movements active in the Gaza Strip said in a joint statement. “Hospitals are civilian buildings dedicated to health, which have done nothing that contravenes their tasks as defined by international humanitarian law.” One of the buildings is on fire “following an airstrike”, added the Hamas Ministry of Health, deploring “dozens of martyrs”, some bodies having been brought from the surroundings of the hospital, others remaining on the roadway, “no one being able to transport them to the hospital due to the intensity of the shooting”.
The Hamas government press service claimed that al-Shifa hospital was “bombed”, specifying that “tens of thousands of displaced people” were in the building. The Gaza Health Ministry warned: “We hold the Israeli occupation responsible for the lives of medical staff, patients and displaced Palestinians inside Al-Shifa Hospital. »
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates// warns of the dangers of #displacing the remaining civilians in the northern Gaza Strip
The Israeli government bears full responsibility for the lives of medical staff and displaced people in Al-Shifa and its environs… pic.twitter.com/xmbE0QT3Js
— State of Palestine – MFA ???????????????? (@pmofa) March 18, 2024
“The Ministry of Health calls on all international institutions to immediately stop this massacre against the sick, the wounded, the displaced and the medical staff inside the hospital,” he added on Telegram.
An operation in a hospital, a first?
The Israeli army had already entered this hospital on November 15, and the establishment is no longer operating at a minimum and with a reduced team. After this large-scale operation, the Israeli army said it had found “munitions, weapons and military equipment” from the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the al-Shifa hospital, which Hamas denied. The IDF also said it had discovered a 55 m long tunnel used according to it “for terrorism” under the hospital, and it invited journalists to visit it.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli army has carried out operations in several hospitals in the Palestinian territory. She accuses Hamas of using health establishments as command centers. Less than a third of hospitals in the Gaza Strip are operational, and only partially, according to the UN.
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