Israeli soldiers captured around 100 suspected Hamas militants during a raid on the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, the Israeli military said today, releasing first-person footage of its troops storming the facility.
The intense video showed soldiers from Shayetet 13, an elite Israeli reconnaissance unit, approaching the building alongside tanks and armored vehicles before scouring the hospital hallways in search of Hamas fighters.
The video does not show soldiers detaining militants or medical staff, but concludes with the unit inspecting what appeared to be a weapons cache discovered in a hospital room.
Gaza and Hamas health officials denied that militants were present at the hospital, protesting that Israeli troops detained dozens of vital male medical staff when the facility was already struggling to operate.
But the IDF said it was necessary to do so because Hamas had disguised some people identified as militants as hospital staff.
“Soldiers detained approximately 100 terrorists from the compound, including terrorists who tried to escape during the evacuation of civilians,” the Israeli military said.
‘Inside the hospital they found weapons, terrorist funds and intelligence documents.
“Some of the fully identified terrorists disguised themselves as medical personnel, so we had no choice but to control the medical personnel as well,” an IDF official said in a briefing this morning.
The intense video showed soldiers from Shayetet 13, an elite Israeli reconnaissance unit, approaching the building along with armored vehicles and tanks.
“Soldiers detained approximately 100 terrorists from the compound,” the Israeli military said.
Israeli forces are seen stalking the hospital corridors with weapons drawn.
View of the destruction at the Kamal Adwan hospital after the withdrawal of Israeli forces, in the northern Gaza Strip, on October 27, 2024.
Images of medical machines are seen inside the hospital
View of the destruction at the Kamal Adwan hospital after the withdrawal of Israeli forces, in the northern Gaza Strip, on October 27, 2024.
Images distributed by the Gaza Health Ministry on Saturday, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed damage to several buildings after Israeli forces withdrew.
The military official said troops had caused limited damage to the hospital upon entering and that soldiers also had to destroy what he described as “dual-use” equipment, such as oxygen tanks, which if detonated could have harmed anyone in the hospital. complex.
Medical staff refused to evacuate the hospital or leave their patients unattended.
Hundreds of displaced Palestinians had also taken refuge there.
“They evacuated everyone who was taking refuge here… They separated men from women and made two lines. It was very humiliating for our men as they were taken away without clothes and without anything to cover themselves,” said Mayssoun Alian, a nurse at the hospital.
The military official said the arrested Hamas suspects were stripped naked to check for weapons.
“After checking them, we provide them with clothes,” he said.
Gaza doctors said at least two children had died inside the intensive care unit after Israeli fire hit the facility’s generators and oxygen station on Friday.
The IDF disputed the claims and said civilians at the hospital were kept safe, despite heavy fighting near the complex.
The hospital was provided with fuel, medical equipment and blood units and the supply of electricity and oxygen was guaranteed, he said.
Following the assault on the Kamal Adwan hospital, Israeli tanks advanced on Monday towards two cities in northern Gaza and this morning into a historic refugee camp.
Some 100,000 civilians are now trapped there, the Palestinian emergency service said, in what the military said were operations to root out regrouping Hamas militants.
View of the destruction at the Kamal Adwan hospital after the withdrawal of Israeli forces, in the northern Gaza Strip, on October 27, 2024.
The Israeli army withdrew from the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza on Saturday after days of siege.
Palestinians who fled the northern Jabalia area of the Gaza Strip, which remains under intense blockade and attacks by the Israeli army, continue their daily lives in difficult conditions at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school United Nations (UNRWA) in western Gaza City, Gaza on October 25, 2024
A body lies covered by a blanket on a cart in front of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip, on October 28, 2024.
Palestinian boy, who lost his life in a recent attack by the Israeli army in the Bureij refugee camp, Mohammed al Dahdouh’s relatives express their grief at the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on 28 October 2024
Palestinians gather to buy bread at a bakery, amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 28, 2024.
The Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry said at least 19 people have been killed today by Israeli airstrikes and shelling, 13 of them in the north of the devastated coastal territory.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said around 100,000 people were isolated in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun without medical or food supplies, although the figure could not be independently verified.
The emergency service said its operations had been halted due to the three-week-long Israeli assault into the north, an area where the army said it had wiped out viable Hamas fighting forces early in the year-long war.
As talks led by the United States, Egypt and Qatar to negotiate a ceasefire resumed Sunday after multiple failed attempts, Egypt’s president proposed an initial two-day truce to exchange four Israeli Hamas hostages for some Palestinian prisoners, which would be followed by talks within 10 days. days of permanent ceasefire.
There was no public comment from Israel or Hamas, each of which accuses the other of maintaining irreconcilable conditions for ending the war.
Northern Gaza was the first part of the enclave to be hit by Israel’s ground offensive in the territory following the Hamas cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, with intense shelling largely leveling towns such as Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya. .
However, Hamas-led militants continue to attack Israeli forces in hit-and-run operations with anti-tank rockets, mortar salvos, and bombs placed in buildings, streets, and other areas where they anticipate Israeli forces will take up positions.
The war broke out after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli counts.
The death toll from Israel’s retaliatory air and ground strikes in Gaza has reached 43,020, Gaza’s Health Ministry said in an update on Monday, with the densely populated enclave largely reduced to rubble.