Israel-Hamas war: chaos at Nasser hospital where IDF searches for hostage remains

2024-02-15 19:48:44

Artillery fire against its buildings, soldiers deployed in the corridors, chaos among patients: Israeli forces carried out an operation on Thursday in the largest hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip, hoping in particular to find the remains of hostages there. This “targeted and limited operation” at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes began early in the morning, the Israeli army said, after weeks of intense bombing and clashes with Palestinian Hamas fighters in the neighborhood.

The Nasser hospital was targeted by artillery fire in the early hours of the day while “Israeli forces had told medical staff and patients that they could stay on the site”, regretted on X (ex-Twitter ) the NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Videos circulating on social media showed scenes of chaos in the hospital, such as rescuers trying to take patients to safety from the orthopedic ward, which appeared to have been hit by a strike. Or people walking through a narrow alley to try to escape the hospital, to which AFP did not have access this week.

“The Nasser Medical Complex is witnessing a disastrous and worrying situation,” said the Hamas Ministry of Health, reporting “a near exhaustion” of fuel stocks, essential to running the generators and providing electricity. “This directly threatens the lives of patients,” the ministry said in a statement. Medical staff raised the alarm on Wednesday over the fate of the hospital, with a nurse denouncing the lack of drinking water, sewers backing up in the emergency room and Israeli snipers stationed on the roofs of the establishment.

Bodies of hostages

The Israeli military said in a statement that it had “credible intelligence from various sources, including released hostages, indicating that Hamas had held hostages” in the hospital and that there may be bodies of hostages there. ” on the spot.

At the beginning of the week, the Israeli army carried out a commando operation in Rafah which made it possible to free two Israeli-Argentine hostages, Fernando Marman and Luis Har, kidnapped on October 7 in the Nir Yitzhak kibbutz, located on the Israeli side but close to the towns of Khan Younes and Rafah.

Hamas captured nearly 250 hostages in this unprecedented attack on Israeli soil, which resulted in the death of more than 1,160 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. A truce in November allowed the release of 105 of these hostages. Today there are 130 left in Gaza, of whom 29 are believed to have died, according to the Israeli army. In retaliation, Israel launched an offensive that left 28,663 people dead in Gaza, the vast majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.

According to the latter, thousands of people, including patients, had to leave the hospital where the situation is “catastrophic”, with staff being unable to evacuate the bodies to the morgue due to the lack of security in the complex. But the spokesperson for the Israeli army, Daniel Hagari, denied on Thursday that he wanted to evacuate the establishment. “We insisted that patients and staff did not have to evacuate the hospital,” he said. And to assure: “We are not seeking to harm innocent civilians. We are trying to find our hostages and bring them home.”