Israeli Special Forces on Thursday entered Nasser
Hospital, the largest remaining functioning medical facility in Gaza,
according to both the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Ministry of Health in
Hamas-run Gaza.
The news came after doctors and medical officials in
southern Gaza said Israeli snipers had shot dead a number of people as
they tried to flee the Nasser Medical Complex. An eyewitness to the shootings,
who is a trauma surgeon at the hospital, said at least two people were killed
by snipers on Tuesday, with more shot and injured.
The hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis has for
weeks been at the center of an ongoing
Israeli military assault in the area.
The IDF spokesperson claimed to have “credible
intelligence from a number of sources, including from released hostages,” that
Hamas had previously held hostages at the hospital, and that the bodies of
deceased hostages may be present at the hospital. The military did not publicly
release that evidence.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that IDF forces were
“conducting a precise and limited operation inside Nasser hospital.” Israeli
forces “apprehended a number of suspects” during the raid, the IDF said in a
statement on Thursday.
Hamas denied to CNN that it is operating at Nasser
Hospital in Khan Younis. “Hamas has no business in the hospital,” Muhammad
Nazzal, a member of the Hamas Political Bureau, told CNN on Thursday.
One former hostage told
CNN last month that she was held at Nasser Hospital – a claim CNN
could not independently verify, and which Hamas denied.
Dr. Ashraf Al-Qidra, spokesperson for the Ministry of
Health, said earlier: “The Israeli occupation storms the Nasser Medical Complex
and turns it into a military barracks after demolishing the southern wall and
entering from it.”
Israeli military bulldozers are digging up the mass graves
that had been dug inside the complex walls, Dr. Al-Qidra said.
Palestinian patients arrive in Rafah after
they were evacuated from Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, on Thursday, as
Israeli forces entered the last remaining functioning medical facility in Gaza.
At least eight people trying to escape along the route
came under gunfire on Tuesday, the trauma surgeon at the hospital, who asked
not to be named for security reasons, told CNN.
Among those injured, according to the surgeon, was a
16-year-old boy shot with four bullets at the hospital gate.
In a series of voice notes, the surgeon said medical teams
at the hospital have been under intense bombardment for at least three
days. His testimony was shared with CNN by his colleague.
“The tanks and the snipers (are) surrounding the hospital
from all directions,” the surgeon said in a voice message early Wednesday.
“They threatened to bomb the hospital within half an hour.”
Israel has repeatedly said that its military forces do not
target civilians.
In a video seen by CNN, men, women and young children
carrying rucksacks frantically gather their belongings before evacuating the
hospital. The sound of Israeli drones overhead can also be heard.
“They have bombed a warehouse inside the hospital … most of the medical supplies
have been burned,” the surgeon said.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza also said Israeli
sniper fire had killed civilians on Tuesday and said a further seven people
were shot dead by Israeli snipers on Monday.
More than 1,500 displaced people are still inside the
facility, including at least 273 patients and 190 medical staff, according to
the Ministry of Health in Hamas-controlled Gaza. There are three children
inside the nursery, it added.
Early in the war, the Israeli military designated Khan Younis
as a safer zone and told residents from northern Gaza to seek shelter there.
But as the IDF pushed its ground offensive south, the city became
its next focus.
The IDF says Khan Younis is a Hamas stronghold, and that a
tunnel network underneath civilian buildings in the city was likely where Hamas
planned the October 7 attacks, in which more than 1,200 people were killed –
the deadliest such attacks in Israel’s history.
The destruction of the city of Khan Younis due to Israel’s
military campaign is widespread, with many buildings completely destroyed and
the rubble bulldozed away, CNN
witnessed.
In the west of the city, where the hospital is located,
the Israeli military said
it was targeting Hamas outposts, infrastructure, and command and
control centers.
Hamas has denied hiding in hospitals and other civilian
structures and CNN cannot independently verify either claim.
Vital medical services at the hospital had collapsed in
late January, according to
Doctors without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and
staff were left with “very low supplies that are insufficient to handle mass
casualty events.”
In late January, doctors at the hospital described a
“completely catastrophic” with the hospital “entirely besieged” by Israeli
forces.
Video filmed on Tuesday at the hospital shows columns of
smoke at its perimeter, an Israeli bulldozer destroying a hospital perimeter
wall, and an armored vehicle entering the hospital grounds. The sound of gunfire
can be heard throughout.
Electrical generators will stop within 72 hours if the
Israeli bombardment persists, Dr. Al-Qidra, the spokesman for the
Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Wednesday.
“The situation is catastrophic and very disturbing in the
Nasser Medical Complex, and there is a state of panic among those present
there,” he said. “Sewage water is flooding the emergency department.”
With so much destruction in northern Gaza and the current
offensive unfolding in the southern part of the besieged enclave, MSF said that
many people have no safe place to flee.
“People ask us ‘Where is it safe? Where should we go?’,
but there is no answer to that, and it really leads to a feeling of despair,”
said Lisa Macheiner, a MSF project coordinator in Gaza.
MSF condemned the Israeli military’s order to evacuate
patients, staff and displaced people from Nasser Hospital, saying “people have
been forced into an impossible situation.”
“Stay at Nasser hospital against the Israeli military’s
orders and become a potential target, or exit the compound into an apocalyptic
landscape where bombings and evacuation orders are a part of daily life,”
Macheiner said.
“Hospitals should be considered as safe places and
shouldn’t even be evacuated in the first place.”
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