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Israeli forces entered al-Shifa hospital in Gaza on Wednesday to conduct what the navy described as a “exact and focused operation” towards Hamas.
The transfer by Israeli troops comes days after they surrounded the besieged strip’s largest medical advanced, the place tens of hundreds of individuals have been sheltering from Israel’s bombardment of the coastal enclave.
Israel claims al-Shifa is a big website for Hamas’s operations as a result of it sits on prime of the armed group’s underground infrastructure, which the Israeli navy intends to destroy.
The Israel Protection Forces mentioned in a press release on social media platform X that its operation in a “specified space” of the hospital was “primarily based on intelligence info and an operational necessity”.
Medical doctors on the hospital in Gaza Metropolis have repeatedly denied that it’s getting used for Hamas navy operations.
John Kirby, a spokesperson for the Nationwide Safety Council, advised reporters that members of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one other smaller militant faction primarily based in Gaza, “saved weapons” in al-Shifa and have been “ready to answer an Israeli navy operation towards that facility”.
Al-Shifa, and all however one of many different hospitals in northern Gaza, have stopped functioning, in keeping with the UN, as Israel’s navy has laid siege to the strip as a part of its greater than five-week battle towards Hamas.
The determined state of affairs in Gaza’s hospitals has been a supply of rigidity between Israel and its allies, with the US, France and different western nations more and more pushing Israel to train restraint in operations close to medical services.
US President Joe Biden warned this week that hospitals “should be protected,” saying: “My hope and expectation is that there will probably be much less intrusive motion relative to hospitals.”
Kirby added that Hamas was utilizing hospitals together with al-Shifa and the tunnels beneath them to carry hostages. However he mentioned Washington didn’t assist hanging a hospital from the air and didn’t need “a firefight in a hospital the place harmless folks, helpless folks, sick individuals are merely making an attempt to get the medical care they deserve”.
Gaza, house to 2.3mn folks, has been enduring a deepening humanitarian disaster since Israel launched a retaliatory offensive towards Hamas after the Islamist militant group launched a devastating assault on October 7.
Hamas’s assault on southern Israel killed about 1,200 folks, and about 240 hostages have been taken, in keeping with Israeli officers.
Greater than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israel’s bombardment of the strip, in keeping with Palestinian well being officers.
Israel’s forces final month launched a land offensive within the coastal enclave and surrounded Gaza Metropolis, Hamas’s important political and navy base within the strip.
Greater than 1.5mn folks in Gaza have been compelled from their properties, and hundreds of individuals have sought sanctuary at hospitals, whereas the well being system has been pushed right into a state of collapse.
The UN’s humanitarian arm mentioned 32 sufferers — together with three untimely infants — had died at al-Shifa since Saturday on account of energy loss and “dire circumstances” on the hospital.
Mohamed Abu Silmeyeh, its director, warned on Saturday that medics have been having to wrap infants in cellophane to maintain them alive after incubators stopped working as a result of lack of electrical energy.
The Palestinian well being ministry in Gaza mentioned on Tuesday that 170 folks had been buried in a mass grave within the courtyard of al-Shifa on account of the “problem of burying them” elsewhere “due to the siege imposed on it from all sides”.
The ministry on Monday mentioned greater than 100 our bodies at al-Shifa have been starting to decompose and that “the odor of corpses” was all over the place. It added that 8,000 displaced folks have been sheltering on the hospital, however there was no meals or recent water.
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