Roving Periscope: After 4 months, IDF arrests 20 Hamas terrorists from Gaza hospital
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: After nearly 30,000 deaths in the last four months of the ongoing Gaza War, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Friday claimed they have arrested from a Gaza hospital more than 20 Hamas terror suspects involved in the October 7 attack on the Jewish state.
“The troops located weapons inside the Nasser Hospital and arrested dozens of terror suspects, including over 20 terrorists who participated in the October 7 massacre,” the army said in a statement.
The military operation was still ongoing at the hospital in the southern Gazan city of Khan Yunis, it said.
“The activity is based on IDF (army) intelligence indicating that Hamas terrorist activity is being carried out from within the hospital,” it said, according to media reports.
“Hamas has previously used the hospital as a launch pad to fire mortar shells, including during a Hamas attack last month, which was revealed in IDF radar imagery,” it said without giving other details.
During the raid, the Israeli army said its forces found mortar shells, grenades, and additional weapons belonging to Hamas.
The army launched the operation at Nasser Hospital on Thursday, saying it had information suggesting hostages seized by Gaza operatives in the October 7 attack that sparked the war had been held at the facility, and that bodies of some of the captives may still be inside.
The IDF said it raided the biggest functioning hospital in Gaza, as a video posted online showed chaos, shouting, and the sound of shooting in darkened corridors that were filled with dust and smoke.
Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari described the raid on Nasser Hospital as “precise and limited” and said it was based on credible information that Hamas terrorists were hiding in the facility, had kept hostages there, and that bodies of hostages may still be there.
A spokesperson for Hamas called Israel’s claim “lies”.
Health officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said Israel had forced out displaced people and families of medical staff sheltering in Nasser Hospital, with some 2,000 arriving in the southern border city of Rafah overnight and some pushing north to Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza.
The ongoing war began on October 7 when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing 253 hostages, according to Israeli reports.
Israel’s air and ground offensive has since devastated tiny, crowded Gaza, killing at least 28,663 people, also mostly civilians, and forcing most of its 2.3 million inhabitants from their homes.
The UN humanitarian office said on Wednesday that Nasser Hospital was besieged by Israeli forces with allegations of sniper fire at the facility, endangering the lives of medics, patients, and thousands of displaced people.
The medical charity Medicins San Frontieres said people ordered by Israel to evacuate the hospital faced an impossible choice to stay “and become a potential target” or leave “into an apocalyptic landscape” of bombings.
Fighting at the hospital comes as Israel faces growing international pressure to show restraint in its Gaza war, after vowing to press its offensive into Rafah, the last relatively safe place for civilians in the enclave on the border with Egypt.
Attacks that have destroyed the majority of Gaza’s medical facilities have caused particular concern throughout the conflict, including Israeli raids on hospitals in other cities.
